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TOMORROW 



BOOKS BY HUGO MUNSTERBERG 

Psychology and Life 

pp. 28b, Boston, 1899 

Grundziige der Psychologie 

pp. jbj, Leipzig, 1900 

American Traits 

PP. 2JSt Boston, iqo2 

Die Amerikaner 

PP. 302 and 349, Berlin, 1904 (Rev. 191 2) 

Principles of Art Education 

PP. 118, New York, 190s 

The Eternal Life 

pp. 72, Boston, 1905 

Science and Idealism 

pp. 71, Boston, 190b 
Philosophic der Werte 

pp. 4.8b, Leipzig, 1907 

On the Witness Stand 

Pp. 269, New York, 1908 

Aus Deutsch-Amerika 

Pp. 245, Berlin, 1909 

The Eternal Values 

pp. 43b, Boston, 1909 

Psychotherapy 

PP. 401, New York, 1909 

Psychology and the Teacher 

PP. 330, New York, iqio 

American Problems 

pp. 220, New York, 1910 

Psychologie und Wirtschaftsleben 

pp. 192, Leipzig, 1912 

Vocation and Learning 

pp. 289, St Louis, 1912 

Psychology and Industrial Efficiency 

pp. 321, Boston, 191 3 

American Patriotism 

pp. 262, New York, 1913 

Grundzuge der Psychotechnik 

pp. 767, Leipzig, 1914 

Psychology and Social Sanity 

pp. 320, New York, 1914 

Psychology, General and Applied 

pp. 488, New York, 1914 

The War and America 

//. 210, New York, 1 91 4 

The Peace and America 

Pp. 276, New York, 19/ j 

The Photoplay 
PP. 333, New York, 19/6 

Tomorrow 
//. 279, New York, 191b 



TOMORROW 

LETTERS TO A FRIEND 
IN GERMANY 



BY 

HUGO MUNSTERBERG 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK LONDON 

1916 



-Mis 



CoPVBIQHT, 1916, BT 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

CoPTBIGHT, 1916, BT THE ILLINOIS PUBLISHING Compaq 




OCT 30 1916 

Printed in the United States of America. 



9CI.A446176 



CONTENTS 



I. The Contrasts of the Future 

II. The New Nationalism . 

III. Nationalism in America 

IV. Nationalism and the German-Ameri 

cans ..... 

V. The New Idealism 

VI. Idealism in America . 

VII. The New Pacifism 

VIII. The New Internationalism . 

IX. The Reconstruction 

X. Postscript .... 



PAGE 
1 

22 
50 

74 
110 
138 
169 
213 
243 
270 



TOMORROW 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

My dear Friend: 

This morning your good letter came with 
its Berlin news. Of course, the word news 
is relative. The letter was more than ninety 
days under way and a good deal of history 
has been made between your writing and my 
reading it. Yet it was an unusual pleasure 
to hold your letter in my hand with its big 
label "Opened by the Censor." In those old, 
almost forgotten days of peace it seemed to 
me a matter of course that three times a 
week a large pile of European correspondence 
should come to my breakfast table. The mail 
from the fatherland did not awake more ex- 
citement than the daily newspaper. Now 
everything is changed. Nine-tenths of the 
letters addressed to me do not arrive at all; 
they are thrown overboard. And so the few 

1 



TOMORROW 

which do slip through bring a pleasure never 
before attached to such frail sheets. More- 
over, in earlier times the German mail took 
six days from port to port. If your letter 
had arrived with such undue haste, it would 
have found me in a mood in which I should 
hardly have cared to spend my time in 
lengthy answers. But now the thought of 
war between America and Germany has for- 
tunately faded away, and, freed from that 
nightmare, I can really think of all those 
suggestive questions which your letter raises. 
Yet your queries are, after all, merely varia- 
tions of one fundamental question : "What will 
the future bring us ? You turn to me because 
one whose lifework is psychology may best 
foresee the days which wait for us, and one 
who lives in a neutral country may look with 
clearer eyes toward the tomorrow than those 
in belligerent lands. 

I accept your challenge. But if you really 
want to hear from me what I think of the 
times to come and about the role which 
America will play, I am afraid I shall need 
many a sheet. Yet it is vacation time and 
here at the beautiful seashore of the New 
England coast I love to write to my German 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

friends while I look over the blue ocean 
which ought to bind and not to divide Amer- 
ica and Europe. You will not mind if I write 
in English. I do not trust the British censor 
to read my small German script. He would 
condemn my letters to execution, not because 
I love German politics too much, but because 
he loves German grammar too little. I shall 
write to you week after week, and if you 
think it wise to allow the newspaper readers 
in Berlin to look over your shoulder I surely 
have no objection. The wireless brings to 
the German papers excellent extracts from 
the story of American events ; everybody on 
the continent knows the essential news. But 
in politics the unessential is just the most 
important and the superfluous becomes nec- 
essary for the real understanding of the 
time. The rigorous blockade of the last half 
year has cut off the frills which scores of 
writers supplied to the German press until 
last Christmas. Nor have you since then any 
American papers or magazines. Hence my 
commentaries may be welcome to those who 
want to look ahead. But if these letters fare 
no better and are thrown overboard, too, I 
shall seek comfort in the proverb of the 

S 



TOMORROW 

Orient: "Do good and cast it into the sea; 
if the fish do not see it, the Lord will." 

But let me say this from the start : Your 
letter always speaks of the old world and the 
new world, and means by that Europe and 
America. Let us bury such phrases of yes- 
terday. The America of today has become 
part of that old, old world, with the same 
emotions and the same aspirations and the 
same prejudices which have made history for 
untold centuries. The really new world has 
not come, but we feel it coming; the really 
new world will be with us after the war, and 
America and Europe will then be one, equally 
old, equally young, equally frightened by the 
memory of the world calamity, equally hope- 
ful for the new age after the war. The to- 
morrow compared with the yesterday will 
be a,like for all the great nations. 

Do not misjudge me; do not fancy that 
I foresee a colorless melting together, a 
cosmopolitan oneness after the exhausting 
strife. On the contrary! Of all that will 
be common to the nations of tomorrow, noth- 
ing will be more marked than their feeling 
of independence, of selfhood, of uniqueness. 
They had lived too much after one pattern. 

4 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

The storm has shaken them and has brought 
back to every people the belief in its own 
solemn mission. Nationalism will grow in 
the new world after the war with a vigor 
which that faint-hearted world of the past did 
not know. But it will be a new nationalism 
with loftier aims and purer purposes. Jus- 
tice will reign instead of jealousy. 

Yet the new nationalism cannot be imag- 
ined without a new internationalism. No 
lesson of the war has been more impressive 
than that of the interdependence of all civil- 
ized nations. In the clash and the roar of the 
cultural universe they grasped for the first 
time the fundamental truth that they are, 
after all, the united states of the world. Will 
this new internationalism bring us peace! I 
know it will surely bring us the will for 
peace. The pacificism of the old world will 
disappear, but a new pacificism will grow 
among us, virile, just, and inspiring. I hope 
it will not speak in the threatening lan- 
guage of force: to enforce peace means to 
endanger peace. But it will be powerful 
through the idealistic spirit which will be the 
deepest trait of the new time. Life has 
gained a new meaning. Out of suffering and 

5 



TOMORROW 

woe the cry for a nobler life will not be in 
vain. The new idealism will be the salvation 
of the century. I do not know, and my psy- 
chology cannot help me to predict, in which 
month or year the bells of peace will ring. 
But I do know that this new nationalism and 
new idealism and new pacificism and new in- 
ternationalism will grow wonderfully out of 
the ruins of the war, and that in the spell of 
this richer fulfillment there will be no victors 
and no vanquished. . . . 

But while such hopes and beliefs may glow 
in our hearts and make our darkness toler- 
able, they cannot be the answers to your 
questions, as long as they are nothing but 
beliefs and hopes. The psychologist, to be 
sure, will not forget that the wishes of the 
soul are the deepest formative energies not 
only in the single individual but also in the 
nation and in the concert of nations. The 
better future will never be with us if a de- 
spondent pessimism once takes hold of the 
civilized world, and if the leading minds 
yield to the fear that the cataclysm of this 
war must destroy European culture just as 
Eome once broke down and the night of me- 
dievalism followed. In this turmoil of bat- 

6 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

ties it would be the most disastrous defeat 
if hope and belief and optimistic conviction 
were crushed by the panic of our emotions. 
If victory, not in the war, but after the war, 
is really to come, not to regiments but to 
mankind, it will be only because we think 
early of our preparedness — preparedness of 
the world's heart and spirit, preparedness 
by hope and faith and mutual understand- 
ing. But however much such faith may re- 
move the mountains of the political world, 
to move them we must first know where the 
mountains stand. 

What are the stubborn facts? What have 
those to report who have been in the trenches 
and in the headquarters, with the crowds and 
with the leaders in the belligerent lands and 
who have moved among the neutrals, if neu- 
trals there be? What are the general ten- 
dencies which they have observed? Yet is 
this question fair? The will to observe 
is always hampered by hidden # prejudices. 
Everybody hears what he expects or likes 
to hear. The Americans, who are strongly 
suggestible, are especially inclined to inter- 
weave impressions from without and feelings 
from within. No wonder that in reports 

7 



TOMORROW 

which we receive here from earnest men curi- 
ous contradictions prevail. Still less wonder 
that the day is carried by those who tell us 
that the one great change which the war will 
bring will be the triumph of liberalism, of 
progressivism, yes, of radicalism and social- 
ism. We hear the prophets who come back 
from their pilgrimages in many a land and 
who tell us : "In Europe's populace a restless 
spirit is setting in. Not articulate as yet. It 
has not bubbled up to the surface. But deep 
down the fires are boiling; the brew is sim- 
mering. . . . All this spells a popular reac- 
tion when peace is finally ratified. There is 
the likelihood that uprisings will blaze out 
against the wealthy in Europe's chief cities." 
It is only natural when men with strong 
socialistic trend single out the firebrands of 
England and France and Germany and Eus- 
sia for heart-to-heart talks that they should 
soon see Europe's future burning red. No- 
body can blame them for hurrying home with 
a cry of alarm: "The deep passion sweep- 
ing over Europe will make itself felt in 
America." But even the sober ones must 
acknowledge that the socialists in Europe 
will stand on firmer ground after the war 

8 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

than before. The classes have learned to un- 
derstand one another. Those who have in- 
termingled in the dugouts can never again 
look on one another as if they were creatures 
of different kind and of different value. It 
may be still more true that a progressive 
liberalism will raise its head in regions where 
it was little seen, and that its views will be 
heard with respect and sympathy where it 
was too often treated as mere opposition. 
The willingness with which all parts of the 
peoples made their sacrifices can never be 
forgotten. The service which liberal thought 
and progressive science, middle-class senti- 
ment and enthusiasm have rendered in every 
field will count against reaction everywhere. 
The new spirit will sweep away every dust- 
covered tradition ; and I trust that very soon 
when you cast your vote for representatives 
in the Prussian Diet you may at last do it 
in accordance with a more progressive elec- 
tion scheme; similar to that of the German 
Reichstag, the most democratic in Europe. 
Even the Anglo-Russian alliance will bring 
no czarism across the Channel and quite a 
little democratic spirit to the Duma. 
Yet who can deny that the forces which 
9 



TOMORROW 

push in the opposite direction are just as 
active and powerful? No people submits for 
years to a dictatorial regime without a men- 
tal remolding, and dictators have reigned 
throughout the belligerent lands, at the front 
and behind it, in city and village, in the pub- 
lic press and private homes. There was 
never a war without worship for the military 
hero, and never was a nation in peril without 
instinctively strengthening its centralizing 
energies. Victorious and disastrous wars 
alike have reenforced the conservative ele- 
ments of a nation, and reaction has always 
lurked in the barracks. If there was one 
bureaucracy in Western Europe which was 
always denounced as stubbornly conserva- 
tive, it was the German one. Can we really 
expect that its power will shrink after the 
strongest test has been made and has proved 
even to the most incredulous that miracles 
are still possible? How shallow today sound 
all those flippant jottings of the American 
papers in the early war times, dealing with 
the junkers and princes of Germany! Even 
the ignorant have learned that princes and 
peasants' sons stood and fell together in the 
trenches, and that the decried policies of re- 

10 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

gardless warfare and the harsh peace condi- 
tions were demanded not by the emperor and 
his chancellor, but by the speakers of the in- 
dustrial centers and many a liberal politician. 
Within Germany and without many preju- 
dices against the conservatives have melted 
away. I remember well how you yourself 
denounced their policies on account of their 
apparently selfish agrarian tactics which 
raised the cost of living for the working- 
men. Can you deny that without those ego- 
istic agrarians the bread would have disap- 
peared from your own table during the war, 
and that Germany might really have come 
near to starving misery? It is easy to praise 
one side and to denounce the other, but the 
psychologist who simply tries to understand 
the working energies must frankly admit that 
the war has pruned the liberal and the con- 
servative trees alike, and that abundant fruit 
may be expected from both. The tension be- 
tween those opposing energies in the world 
of politics may be decreased, but I do not see 
any symptoms which indicate that one will 
overcome the other. 

Needless to say that the contrast which 
Americans especially like to bolster up into 

11 



TOMORROW 

a world problem, that of republic and mon- 
archy, will in the same way remain unchanged 
after the war. It may be that a few more 
little kingdoms will be created; it may be 
that a number of republics will grow, but 
there will be no landslides. One of the most 
influential men in America assured me in that 
sinister autumn of 1914 that only one result 
of this war would be certain : "Whoever won, 
there would be no longer any Hohenzollern 
or Hapsburg on the throne. It sounds like 
antediluvian news. The oratory against the 
German Emperor and against his starting of 
the war has lost its audience even in the back- 
woods of politics. When peace is with us 
the world will feel more distinctly than ever 
before that the form of a state is the out- 
growth of historic conditions and cannot be 
settled by logical reasoning, that one is in 
itself not better than another, and that a 
president would fit into Petrograd as badly 
as a czar in Washington. Even as to the 
methods of government, enlightened public 
opinion will hardly be swayed into new di- 
rections. You are not the only university 
professor who wrote to me in the first year of 
the war about the great changes which would 

12 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

have to come in the direction of more demo- 
cratic control. The time of diplomatic in- 
trigues and of secret treaties must come to 
an end. The civilization of Europe must not 
again be the plaything of mediocre pseudo- 
statesmen. Clear thinking Englishmen have 
told us that we should never have had war 
if the British people had known all the time 
what clandestine agreements had been made 
for them. And so it went all around. Aston- 
ishment and indignation followed everywhere 
when archives were opened, and -the educated 
classes of every nation seemed to find their 
political comfort only in the discovery that 
the rival diplomats were still more incompe- 
tent. 

Yet have the masses, north and south and 
east and west, really shown surer judgment, 
safer instinct, clearer insight and fairer de- 
cision? Must we not rather acknowledge 
that on both sides of the ocean those actors 
played best during the war who did not play 
for the applause of the audience? Every- 
where it seems the public was more often 
wrong than the cabinets ; the emissaries, with 
all their glorified business experience, proved 
less able even in practical affairs than the 

13 



TOMORROW 

exclusive diplomats. I doubt whether I 
should still have a chance to write even this 
letter if you and some seventy million other 
Germans had voted on the U-boat question 
when the American note reached Germany. 
The most important factors in such a decision 
can be known only to a few, simply because 
they stop being important and being worth 
knowing as soon as more than a few know 
them. We all shall go on clamoring for dem- 
ocratic control, and profiting from the lack 
of it. 

It strikes me that it will be similar with 
most other disputed tendencies of the past. 
Some tell us that the time after the war will 
be the age of the women. The mothers and 
girls have fought this war ; they have shown 
themselves companions and comrades in the 
men's work as never before, and their quiet 
aid behind the lines was more admirable than 
any heroism. They have shown their fitness 
for numberless callings which they did not 
dream of entering before. The pathos of 
their fate has rewritten the statutes for men 
and women in Europe. All this is true; and 
yet it is no less true that millions of men 
have suffered and died for women and chil- 

14 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

dren. Physical force will be valued far more 
than in our peaceful yesterday. In a pe- 
riod of worship for the virile victories, fem- 
inine virtues will appear elements of weak- 
ness. Women may get the suffrage every- 
where, and yet may everywhere be disfran- 
chised, as the spirit of the after-war-time will 
force them to use their womanly vote in the 
service of one-sided manly ideals. 

The same play of psychological forces and 
counterforces will shape the work of arts and 
sciences. It is a pity to see how many fine 
men in all the belligerent lands indulge to- 
day in an almost brutal contempt for the 
charm of art. It cannot be otherwise. Every 
muscle and every thought is bent toward he- 
roic tasks; the hard reality demands char- 
acter and strength and life blood. That 
brings men back to the fundamentals of pure 
existence and suddenly the aestheticism of our 
leisurely hours appears artificial, unhealthy, 
fatal. The demands of the day are better met 
by the ruddy farmer and workingman than 
by the impressionist and the futurist. They 
who have seen the terrors of the battlefield 
shrink from the over-refinement of a per- 
fumed culture and feel choked in the atmos- 

15 



TOMORROW 

phere of mere art. All stage setting appears 
to them deceitful. The world of the scholar 
does not fare better. It seems as if the thun- 
der of the cannon had suddenly awakened the 
somnambulist. The truth of life is simple, 
and the war has brought us back to it; the 
complex truth of the scholarly books stares 
at us with ghastly, empty eyes. Theories are 
merely a fancy of the mind ; the struggle for 
existence does not need words but deeds. Art 
and science alike may bloom in days in which 
we can forget the radical facts of life, but 
they become frivolous when the ground is 
reddened by blood. 

Yet the opposite is no less certain. This 
war is first of all a war of technique and 
that means of science. The laboratory has 
equipped the armies and has triumphed on 
land, in the sea, in the air, and even in the 
ether which carries the wireless. But it was 
and is not only the war of physics and chem- 
istry; the problems of economics and geog- 
raphy, of hygiene and medicine and — if we 
take it with a grain of salt — of international 
law, that have called the scholars into the fore- 
ground. National efficiency can never again 
be severed from scientific thoroughness and 

16 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

it will be a dogma of the future that educa- 
tion, scholarship and theory are the most 
essential conditions of practical success in 
the rivalry of the peoples. Yes, the world 
has learned once more that even philosophies 
can win and lose battles. But with the sci- 
ences the arts ought to flourish. History 
has shown over and over again that the strife 
of the races gives wonderful impulse to 
poetry and drama, to architecture and fine 
arts. A slow pulse favors many a sober 
work; but only when the heart of the world 
beats in excitement, and the emotions of joy 
or sorrow, of hope or fear, of triumph or 
grief, penetrate into every home, will the life 
of beauty become abundant. It is significant 
that the Berlin theaters of this year of war 
are crowded with new plays, new, serious, 
ambitious dramas and operas, and Paris glo- 
ries in her new paintings. 

Will it be different with commerce and in- 
dustry? We hear the sinister voices of those 
who feel sure that Europe will be devastated 
and exhausted, unable to recuperate its eco- 
nomic energies for a generation. On both 
sides the demands of the victor are pro- 
claimed, but on neither side is the word in- 

17 



TOMORROW 

demnity any longer spoken. It would sound 
too absurd when the purses are empty and 
when war debts in every land stagger finan- 
cial imagination. The workers of the fac- 
tories are killed or maimed; commerce and 
industry are paralyzed. And yet commerce 
and industry never had such tremendous 
chances to replenish the world and, even in 
these days of crippled exchange, we know 
that every land is preparing for a gigantic 
after-war rivalry in the markets of the world. 
Never was business ambition so stirred as it 
will be when the soldiers return to the work- 
shops and the seven seas are free again. The 
debt of the battles cannot blight it. I remem- 
ber how in my boyhood days my native town 
of Danzig still had to pay interest for the 
debts of the Napoleonic wars of our great- 
grandfathers, but all the time the beautiful 
seaport enjoyed its splendid commercial suc- 
cess, and did not care about the slowly dis- 
appearing debit figures in its budget from 
long-forgotten, horrible war times. All Eu- 
rope will have to pay for generations, but 
will be able to pay with open hands. 

Even the question of peace forces the an- 
swers yes and no to the lips of the psycholo- 

18 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

gist. Yes, as soon as this war of all wars is 
at last concluded, every thought will center 
around the hope that such millionfold mis- 
ery will never visit the world again. Can 
we venture to build up and to build up anew 
if we must tremble in the fear that an explo- 
sion will shake the globe again and shatter 
all to pieces? Generations will be stunned by 
the appalling woe ; the longing for unbroken 
peace must become for a century the deepest 
instinct of the social mind. But there is an- 
other psychological law which no will can 
banish ; the social mind is molded by habits. 
If thoughts and impulses of one type have 
been often repeated, the inner resistance to 
them breaks down, the dislike turns into in- 
difference, habit is triumphant. Not with- 
out punishment does the world become accus- 
tomed to the noise of the battle. In times 
of long peace any thought of war is held in 
check by the emotional habits, but when the 
memory of war is alive the check is removed. 
It seems so much easier to rush once more to 
arms. An earthquake seldom brings only one 
shock. One war leads to another. The psy- 
chological outlook shows both future peace 
and war. 

19 



TOMORROW 

When liberal and conservative, progres- 
sive and reactionary, virile and feminine, 
cultural and anticultural, economic and anti- 
economic, militaristic and pacificists tenden- 
cies of the mind have equal chances after the 
world war, it would be hazardous to prophesy 
whether the special nations will be pushed 
into one or another direction. External con- 
ditions, the influences of great leaders, sys- 
tematic agitations and propaganda, material 
factors, the terms of the peace treaties, sun- 
shine and rain, will decide whether this or 
that tendency will be the stronger in the par- 
ticular land. But there is one great trend 
which will be common to every nation: na- 
tionalism will become paramount. The pose 
of the prophet is not needed for such a mes- 
sage. It is obvious: our tomorrow will be 
nationalistic to the core. 

Let this be the cue for my first three or 
four letters: I want to speak of the new 
nationalism, both in Europe and America. 
Only after a full discussion of this central 
problem shall I turn to the new idealism, to 
the new pacificism and finally to the new in- 
ternationalism of the time to come. This yes 
and no letter of today is only to tell you that 

20 



THE CONTRASTS OF THE FUTURE 

I accept your psychological summons. From 
now on you will hear me saying yes; that 
alone is what our pregnant time is needing. 
But I must delay my real answer until the 
next mail. However thin the paper which I 
have chosen, the letter has already swollen 
to suspicious thickness: Kirkwall is wide 
awake. I have just room to add my cordial 
regards to your wife and daughter, about 
whose admirable Red Cross work I have 
heard enthusiastic reports. 

Faithfully yours, 

H. M. 



II 

THE NEW NATIONALISM 

My dear Colleague: 

It is among the many perversions which 
the war has forced on us that correspondence 
over the ocean has become a one-sided enter- 
prise. I do not know whether my first letter 
with its outlook into the future will ever reach 
you, and if I were to wait for an answer from 
you I should miss the humor of the British 
censorship. I shall simply go on as if I wrote 
for the mere discharge of my soul; and yet 
all my feelings go out to you, and it is as if 
I sat down at your side under the arbor in 
your beautiful garden with the tall, clipped 
rosebushes which are unknown here in Amer- 
ica. How I should like really to spend the 
summer days with you! Above all, I shall 
never overcome my regret that I did not see 
the great emotion of the Germans at the be- 
ginning of the war with my own eyes. You 

22 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

know it was only by accident that I had 
changed my traveling plans, returned my 
steamer tickets and thus happened not to be 
in Berlin when the war broke out and the 
whole country suddenly knew that it had to 
defend its homes against a fivefold superior 
enemy. Oh, how I wish I might have lived 
through that glorious, solemn exaltation of 
the fatherland! That was the hour when 
German nationalism came to its maturity; 
and nationalism is, after all, the greatest 
gift of our time. 

I do not want to suggest that nationalism 
is a pure virtue. Some of the ugliest acts 
of the war were clearly the consequences of 
the newly awaking enthusiastic nationalism 
in the world. In the almost forgotten first 
act of the war Japan seized Kiau Chau. "With 
an abundance of love Germany had built up 
and protected this eastern jewel of its col- 
onies. German or anti-German, everybody 
with a sense of fairness must feel it painfully 
that Japan grasped it at a moment when a 
third of the civilized globe was fighting 
against Germany. I point to it only as a symp- 
tom of the tremendous nationalistic outbreak. 
Japan had no ill feeling against Germany, 

23 



TOMORROW 

but the nationalistic passion had shaken the 
mind of the people: Asia for Asiatics, was 
the new policy, and Japan's mission was to 
be Asia's leader. From that day the new 
spirit in Japan has grown by leaps and 
bounds; the new treaty with Eussia leaves 
little doubt that the fall of Tsing Tau was 
only the beginning. I know you blame the 
Italians still more. Their faithlessness in 
the hour of danger after profiting for thirty 
years from the alliance with Germany and 
Austria has embittered you and every Ger- 
man. But was it not again a nationalism 
which from a thousand sources had grown 
to a stream of such violence that the dam of 
alliance treaties could not possibly hold it 
back? The world had simply ignored the 
rapid swelling of Italian nationalism. The 
glorious memories of old Rome, the proud 
traditions of Italy, the Roman Empire and 
the Italian Renaissance, had fascinated the 
youth of the country, and the D'Annunzio 
spirit was everywhere alive: the tempting 
hour which promised the fulfillment of every 
dream forced nationalism to an overwhelm- 
ing power which hurled war into the land 
of its allies. 

24 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

We probably would agree that this new 
nationalism is first of all the triumph of the 
idea of the state. The political state with 
all its legal abstractness has proved stronger 
than any other bond which holds human 
groups together. How forcibly did the unity 
of the state supersede the diversity of lan- 
guage ! German, French and Italian Switzer- 
land were swayed by one mighty stubborn, 
resentful nationalism. They sympathized in 
Zurich with the Germans and in Geneva with 
the French, but they were one in their faith in 
the Swiss republic. What a conglomerate the 
languages in the Austrian Empire, and yet 
what an accord in the hour of national trial ! 

Above all, the state has proved itself 
stronger than the race. We have heard so 
often and with so much assurance the story 
of the omnipotence of race in human his- 
tory. The true psychologist always knew 
that it was a legend, and the war has demon- 
strated it again. Surely no one can disre- 
gard the tremendous influence of racial traits 
and no melting pot can make them disap- 
pear. To explain history from the angle of 
race is the last word of natural science and 
as such perfectly correct. But to explain the 

25 



TOMORROW 

progress of social events is not the only way 
to understand it. We live in a world of pur- 
poses which must be interpreted and not ex- 
plained. Their meaning and aim count and 
not their naturalistic origin. The pose of 
the scientific account is a sin against the true 
spirit of history. The belief in the eternal 
unity of the nation, the common law, the 
common tradition, the common cultural treas- 
ures and the common aspirations have 
throughout the war overcome the biological 
affinities of the races. The Slavic Bulgars 
turned against the Russians, Anglo-Saxon 
against Teutonic cousins. 

Great Britain and Austria show to the 
world this magnificent power amidst racial 
chaos. Let us be frank to admit that the 
adhesion of the British Empire came to 
many of us as a surprise. We knew what 
India has had to suffer, we remembered what 
the Boers had to go through, and yet when 
the king called the wave of enthusiasm swept 
over the British lands of five continents. 
But the firmness of the Austrian Empire was 
perhaps a still greater revelation. Seven- 
teen races, and yet one national soul I We 
had so often heard that the land must fall 

£6 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

asunder and that the reign of Vienna was 
an artificial superfluity. The jubilant pa- 
triotism of the Austrian Empire best proved 
that there is an inner historic reason for the 
constitutional union of this apparent chaos 
of states. The balance of Europe could 
never have been upheld without the weight 
of that great Austrian power to keep it 
stable. The exceptions only confirm the rule. 
Where, as in Ireland, in Poland, in Ukrania, 
in Finland, distinct traditions of national 
unity had been kept alive, the hope of break- 
ing the present constitutional bond inflamed 
the imagination of the masses, but not be- 
cause the nationalistic idea was too weak, but 
because the memory of old nationalism arose 
against the new. Yet even in Russia, where 
the absorption of subjugated peoples has re- 
mained more external than in any other land, 
the nationalistic sentiment overcame tre- 
mendous obstacles, and even the German ele- 
ments in the Russian bureaucracy proved 
Russian to the core. The fact that the Prus- 
sian Poles in the east and the Alsatians in 
the west were found by this test to be loyal 
Germans was, of course, what we all ex- 
pected. 

27 



TOMORROW 

The secret fear in many a land had been 
much more that the jealousy of the parties 
would hinder the work of the state and that 
the internationalism of the socialists would 
prove dangerous. Nations and races are con- 
cepts which move in different dimensions, 
but nations and parties belong together. The 
race is a biological idea, but the parties and 
nations both belong in the world of historical 
ideas. If nationalism becomes faint-hearted, 
party spirit and international sympathies 
can easily deprive it of all influence. But at 
the bugle call the parties in every land 
outdid one another in their readiness to 
make sacrifices for the national idea. At 
that historic moment when the German so- 
cialists voted the war credit and when the 
German emperor solemnly declared that he 
no longer knew parties but only Germans, 
the spirit of nationalism won its most dif- 
ficult victory. Might it not be said that since 
the beginning of the war it has not suffered 
a single defeat in all Europe? The party 
spirit will come back, as no national life 
would be healthy without a vigorous opposi- 
tion of tendencies within the national frame. 
But the nationalistic energy which remains 

28 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

supreme over all party conflicts will surely 
last when all the battle smoke has cleared 
away. 

What is the real significance of this new 
nationalistic creed? What psychological 
elements enter into its dominion? Is it really 
nothing but crude egotism projected on the 
world map with its gigantic scale? Is it 
merely a scramble for possessions, in order 
that each citizen may profit from his share? 
Is nationalism really bound up with jealousy 
and envy and suspicion, with insincere di- 
plomacy, with aggressive militarism, with 
disregard for justice and humanity? To 
formulate the question means to deny it. 
Only the nationalism of an enemy shows 
such a repulsive face. The true nationalism 
of today looks very different from such a 
caricature which prejudice and superficiality 
suggest. National selfishness may sometimes 
be an injurious by-product of the nationalistic 
spirit, but it is never the essence. The na- 
tionalism which gives meaning to our time 
and which will spread in the near days of 
peace as never before is belief and is faith- 
ful service. 

The starting point, it seems to me, is a 
29 



TOMORROW 

firm conviction that one's nation as it has 
grown and unfolded possesses valuable char- 
acteristic traits. It is a belief in the unique- 
ness and worthiness of the nation's soul. No 
metaphysical speculations about the oversoul 
are involved there. Surely we do not know 
a soul of the nation independent from the 
souls of its members. The stream does not 
flow outside of its myriads of drops. But 
in every nation we grasp a oneness of tradi- 
tions and memories, of language and customs, 
of laws and literature, of arts and sciences, 
of commerce and politics, of morals and re- 
ligion. They hold together and work to- 
gether like the ideas and thoughts and feel- 
ings and emotions and impulses in the soul 
of an individual personality. And just as 
this personal soul is bound to a body with all 
its inherited energies, the national soul too 
belongs to a national body, to a land with all 
the treasures in its soil, with its fields and 
woods, its streams and mountains, its ham- 
lets and towns. Whatever the national soul 
creates is the outcome of all these mental and 
physical possessions. All its historical ex- 
periences are reflected in its deeds; all its 
popular emotions shape its original work and 

30 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

make it characteristically different from that 
of any other people. It may not he better 
and it may not he worse than that of the rest 
of the world, hut nationalism loves the flavor 
of this difference. Nationalism clings with 
all its loyalty to this individuality. 

It is natural that such love and loyalty 
should turn into a devoted overestimation. 
It may even lead to boastful pride. But the 
screaming catchword of the holiday orator 
cannot deprive this nationalistic belief of its 
deeper and better meaning. Surely there 
are periods in which this love and loyalty 
to the specific content of the national soul 
are only faintly heard and almost forgotten. 
These are the times of imitation, when emo- 
tion is silent and mere understanding and 
rational thought pick out the best in what- 
ever corner of the world it can be found. 
Glorious times they are when the noblest 
and maturest works from foreign lands are 
carried over the boundaries and the home is 
radiant with the wisdom and beauty and in- 
spiration of the cultural universe. But the 
heart of the nationalist will find more joy in 
the humble flower grown in the soil of his 
fathers. He will not disregard the achieve- 

31 



TOMORROW 

ments of the world, but he will welcome them 
from abroad only to fertilize the native 
growth. There had been too much shallow 
imitation in the world, too much disregard 
for the genius of the spiritual traditions, too 
great enjoyment of the latest comfort and 
the cleverest saying from wherever it came 
and too little affection for the simpler cus- 
toms and franker speech and rime of one's 
own beloved land. Everybody wore the same 
frocks, and every shopwindow was a bazaar 
of four continents. Slowly the new turn had 
set in everywhere. The more the market 
was filled with the standardized wares and 
the more easily every word was spread by 
wire and wireless, the more men longed to 
overcome the monotony of the colorless ma- 
chine age by new sympathy with all that 
bears the stamp of their own people. Earnest 
minds began to understand again that the 
most lasting products of art and science, of 
law and social morality, are those which are 
cast in the form of national tradition and 
that any true development must come from 
within. The national spirit is no longer any- 
thing accidental; it could not be replaced 
by a careful selection of the choicest gifts 

32 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

from here and there. To gain the best from 
everywhere means to lose the only gift which 
has eternal value. 

From this conviction that the nation's in- 
dividuality and character have lasting value 
in themselves it is only one step to the be- 
lief in the national message. It is not enough 
that we love the treasures of our mental and 
moral traditions; we ought to be ready to 
defend them against foes from within and 
without, to strain every fiber to make them 
effective in the world and to secure respect 
for them among strangers. No true nation- 
alism is at work as long as the feeling of 
the heart has not led to this decision of the 
will. It is a task and not a sentimental lux- 
ury to love one's national culture and prin- 
ciples. It is a solemn service which must 
be performed with all the means of intellect 
and character in times of peace. The aim 
is to foster whatever encourages the national 
energies and to subdue whatever hinders 
their free unfolding. But the final aim is 
still higher. If the national characteristic 
traits are to be made effective, all the scat- 
tered energies must be forged together and 
peoples of similar national traditions and 

33 



TOMORROW 

similar longings must be brought into pro- 
ductive contact. Fanatic minds will be read- 
ily inclined to mold such hopes in a political 
cast and to threaten the realistic world by 
idealistic dreams of Pan-Slavism or Pan- 
Eomanism or Pan-Germanism. But the 
more immediate tasks are not determined by 
such adventurous programs, which can be 
realized only by disturbing the nationalistic 
circles of neighbors. The real duty is con- 
fined to defense, but this defense must be 
carried through with all the powerful means 
which secure protection for national mind 
and body, and the individual must be ready 
for sacrifice. Military preparedness then be- 
comes the moral duty of a healthy nation 
and the statesmen help to prepare by alli- 
ances which look into the future in order to 
secure the boundaries and the freedom of the 
beloved nation. 

But even alliances are only makeshifts. 
The nationalistic spirit craves that safety 
which comes from perfect independence. The 
national body ought to stand firm on its 
own feet. The land ought to be able to sup- 
port itself from its own resources. Nothing 
less can secure the lasting protection of the 

34 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

national soul. Such an instinctive demand 
may not seldom stimulate the hope for ex- 
pansion. Wherever artificial boundaries 
have been set or where the growing enter- 
prise of the population is choked by the nar- 
row limits of a poorer past, new chances will 
be passionately sought. Colonies will be 
grasped, seaports will be sought, and areas 
with untapped mines will be coveted ; and yet 
it would be historically untrue to stamp even 
such aspirations as selfish aggressiveness and 
as immoral lust of the conqueror. This is 
after all the fundamental difference : Selfish- 
ness in individuals or nations seeks pleasure, 
advantage, enjoyment, happiness, but nation- 
alistic ambition serves an idea, is loyalty and 
faithfulness in the fulfillment of a mission 
which is received from history. Nor is such 
an idealistic devotion to the demands of the 
national soul antagonistic to the belief in 
humanity. Humanity and nationalism alike 
are the foes of mere selfishness. 

This was the spirit which slowly grew and 
grew in the last twenty years and which had 
taken firm hold of many a nation before the 
war broke out and without which the war 
would not have come to such world-wide ex- 

35 



TOMORROW 

pansion. No wonder that the war itself re- 
enforced this sentiment everywhere. Nothing 
can unite a nation more firmly than the com- 
mon danger, the common sacrifice. And 
there were dangers and sacrifices not only 
for the belligerents ; everyone of the neutral 
lands too suddenly saw its special risk and 
its special task. There was no nation on 
earth to which in these hours of the Euro- 
pean crisis the uniqueness of its character 
did not appear in sharper relief than before. 
The large nations and the small ones, the 
old and the young, those who fought with the 
sword and those who fought with diplomacy, 
were all touched by the wing of histoiy and 
heard the call of the nationalistic message. 
A world period which begins with such an 
enthusiastic pledge of nationalistic loyalty 
will not soon lose its impulse. Whatever ful- 
fillments or disappointments the world peace 
may bring, it will leave the nations all over 
the globe in the tension of heightened nation- 
alism for many a year to come. 

Only if we have drawn such a sharp de- 
marcation line between national loyalty and 
national selfishness can we do justice to those 
who with excited words appeal to the court 

36 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

of public opinion. Just here in America not 
a few of the most earnest spectators speak 
half in disgust and half in despair about the 
discussions which leaders of thought have 
started in these troubled times. They can- 
not harmonize the harsh onesidedness of 
French and German, English, Austrian and 
Russian scholars with their lifework, which 
ought to be devoted to the truth and nothing 
but the truth. I think it is a low view of 
scholarly truth and a lower view of patriot- 
ism which misleads so many to such a crit- 
icism. They fancy that truth is only a kind 
of photographic copy of an outer reality. 
They are not aware that every so-called truth 
is a remolding of life impressions, a recon- 
struction of experience, a free creation of the 
intellect, which can never be severed from 
the purposes of the creating mind. Hence 
the scholar who, uplifted by a healthy pa- 
triotism, proclaims historic and political 
facts as they appear from the angle of his 
hopes and as he sees them shaped by his na- 
tionalism is not disloyal to the spirit of 
scholarship. Any mathematics and chem- 
istry of political actions is unthinkable. To 
be a Frenchman means to affirm with thought 

37 



TOMORROW 

and will the purposes and ideals of the 
French nation; and nobody is a German but 
he who realizes through his will the values 
and aims of the German national soul. If 
Bergson and Eucken stand up with different 
claims about the war, they do not deny the 
highmindedness of the philosopher; they are 
loyal to the ideas of the truthseeker just be- 
cause they affirm the values and ideals in 
which they believe. Either serves the truth 
as long as all the judgments of his mind are 
in agreement with one another: truth is ulti- 
mately belief. 

But while our beliefs may clash, no hatred 
ought to darken our vision. The mutual 
hatred of nations lowers the nationalistic 
solemnity. It may be true that in the first 
heat of the war the readiness for the needed 
sacrifice can be stirred up most forcefully 
by the injection of hatred. This may also be 
added: Even the feeling of hate is more fit 
for the strife of the nations than the spirit 
of sport which many spectators here would 
like to substitute. If anything can excuse 
the calamity of the European war, it is the 
undeniable fact that everybody has entered 
into it with a nationalistic conviction that 

38 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

reaches the core of his personality. An al- 
most sacred emotion of duty has consecrated 
the national sword. It would be desecrated 
if instead of it the lover of sport were to 
carry the day and if the victory were to ap- 
pear not as a decision on ideal values of life 
but as a mere record on the battlefield. 

The pure nationalist, however, knows 
neither hatred nor sport. His aim is neither 
to destroy nor simply to measure himself 
with the opposing forces. His real goal is 
the positive upbuilding of the national ener- 
gies. He wants to create a lasting good 
which never excludes the growth of foreign 
values. Hence he will respect the opponent 
who is loyal to his own historic convictions 
and who courageously affirms cultural faith 
by the sacrifice of his life. His own loyalty, 
stronger than death, will not interfere with 
luminous justice. 

It seems that the hatred in the belligerent 
countries has slowly burned itself out and 
even here beyond the sea it will not linger 
much longer. There is a land where hatred 
expires, a land of many patriotisms. The 
editorial ships of London and Berlin have 
reached its shore. Finally even the captains 

39 



TOMORROW 

of the New York press will steer toward it 
too. Even the gay yachts of the London 
Punch and the Munich Jugend now lie in the 
harbor of that land ; it may be that the New 
York Life will reach it too. But while the 
hatred disappears, the cruel misjudgment of 
hostile nationalism is still at work, and es- 
pecially German aspirations are still depicted 
among earnest observers as if nationalism 
were nothing but selfishness and the con- 
queror's lust. Germany appears as a dis- 
turber of the world's equilibrium, a possible 
danger even to the American continents, if 
it cannot be crushed in the European strug- 
gle. The social psychologist feels sure that 
the makeup of the German mind discredits 
such historic misinterpretations- 
Germany presents mentally a threefold 
contrast to other leading countries of Eu- 
rope. The German psychological setting is 
marked off from that of the Latin peoples. 
The south of Europe has had through thou- 
sands of years a distinct mental physiog- 
nomy: the Italians, the Spanish, the French, 
have fundamental traits in common with the 
Greeks and Romans of old. Their thinking 
is simple and clear and their joy goes out 

40 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

to the elementary appealing impressions. 
Other men grow up under the northern sky. 
German thought is complex and German joy 
greets those things which are interwoven 
with abstract reflections. Imperialistic con- 
quest is a thoroughly Latin desire : An Alex- 
ander or a Cassar, a Louis XIV or a Napoleon 
would be out of harmony with German emo- 
tions. The lust of conquest is an instinctive 
desire for the elementary joy in power; it 
compares with the policies of the German 
leaders throughout German history as Italian 
music and its love for the sensuous melody 
compares with German music and its joy 
in counterpoint. Germany's nationalism is 
never Napoleonic, never Latin imperialism. 

But Germany's feelings also contrast in 
many points with those of the Anglo-Saxon 
world. Only one point is important here. 
The British Empire is filled with belief 
in strength; that is developed through 
England's geographic position. Her self- 
conscious strength has overpowered the 
world. Its mental spring is the idea of quan- 
tity. It is only natural that the Anglo-Saxon 
adores sport with its conception of record 
— record is always quantity. But the Ger- 

41 



TOMORROW 

man mind is strangely indifferent to the glory 
of quantity; in contrast to it the German 
loves quality. This trend has made the 
Teuton the loser when the world was parti- 
tioned, and too often it has tempted him to 
spend his time with small administrative de- 
tails instead of with the big political move- 
ments. But surely the imperialistic frame of 
mind is natural to those peoples who think 
in arguments of quantity, but entirely for- 
eign to those whose thought treads in the 
path of qualitative ideas. German national- 
ism is never British imperialism. 

The contrast with Russia is no less sharp. 
The marvelous growth of the Russian Em- 
pire has been due to the persistent energy 
with which it subjugated surrounding peo- 
ples from the Baltic to the Pacific. It was 
favored in this by geographic conditions. No 
natural obstacles stood in the way. Peoples 
of any race, of any language, of any religion, 
of any tradition, are forced together under 
one ruthless regime. The Russian unity is 
therefore external and mechanical; the Ger- 
man unity is thoroughly internal and organic 
— it is developed from the community of his- 
tory. Russia would be perfectly consistent 

42 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

if it continued to conquer any neighboring 
land. Even if it were to absorb all Germany, 
Austria, Italy and France, it would only con- 
tinue the policy which it has followed in the 
last three centuries. But Germany would be 
disloyal to its own high past if it were to 
overpower foreign peoples with different 
languages and traditions. German nation- 
alism is never Russian imperialism. Latin, 
Anglo-Saxon and Slavic empires may van- 
quish the world — the Germans never had 
and never will have imperialistic ambitions. 
They believe in their mission, and their mis- 
sion is not to subdue the globe with the 
sword. 

What are the true German aspirations? I 
know we all have met some imaginative Ger- 
mans who like to talk the imperialistic slang. 
I suppose I have seen in my Boston home 
even more of them than you ever saw in Ber- 
lin, because I have always been overrun by 
the German globe-trotters. When they travel 
around the world their fancy is likely to be 
inflamed by the British power. At the after 
dinner coffee they like to girdle the seas with 
German Gibraltars. But surely no respon- 
sible German politician and no earnest Ger- 

43 



TOMORROW 

man thinker indulges in such un-German 
Germanism. The nationalism of the father- 
land is confined to the firm demand for the 
protection and development of the German 
people with its characteristic German civili- 
zation and for an influence in the world which 
corresponds to the inner value of its achieve- 
ments. Such a claim does not injure or 
threaten anyone, but it gives impulse and 
strength to the nation and secures its healthy- 
future. 

This self -protection must be both economic 
and political. I think we are too little aware 
how much the history of Prussia and of Ger- 
many throughout the last three hundred 
years has stood under the pressure of eco- 
nomic needs and especially of the need for 
commerce over the sea. Was not even the 
alliance with Austria and Italy guided by the 
instinctive longing for harbors, when the ac- 
cess to the North Sea was no longer sufficient? 
The hopes of today turn to the new economic 
path from Berlin to Constantinople and be- 
yond. The peaceful conquest by German in- 
dustries depends upon the roads to the world 
through friendly lands. But the longing for 
protection by economic independence cannot 

44 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

be satisfied without expansive, and for a 
while probably expensive, colonies. We all 
talk about Germany as if it stood in line with 
England, France and Russia, and we forget 
how small its territorial possessions are com- 
pared with the three others. Large unde- 
veloped areas in Africa and western Asia still 
demand the effort of the Europeans in order 
to yield an economic harvest. Germany 
hopes for a larger share in this common task. 
Its population is steadily growing; the over- 
flow streamed too long into lands where it 
was lost for the German nation and its work. 
From the nationalistic standpoint it was a 
waste and loss. As soon as new colonies 
offer homesteads to the emigrant, the hu- 
man material is saved for German civiliza- 
tion. But at the same time the colonies can 
be fields of production for the raw material 
which German home industry needs and 
fields of consumption for the finished prod- 
ucts which German factories offer. Truly 
the increase of colonial possessions for eco- 
nomic protection of the nation cannot disap- 
pear again from the nationalistic program. 
Yet commerce and industry cannot be sep- 
arated today from the political hopes and 

45 



TOMORROW 

cares. The colonies are not safe without a 
strong fleet. Above all, the boundaries of the 
home land must be protected against inva- 
sion if the fires of the factories are never to 
burn out. 

Germany is convinced that the war was 
planfully forced on it by the alliance of its 
neighbors. It is true that the German vic- 
tories east and west have made the neutral 
world forget how confidently the Russian and 
French armies hoped to meet at the Branden- 
burg Gate in Berlin. By a natural illusion 
the victorious army appears the aggressor. 
But every German felt that the strongest 
military coalition which the world has seen 
threatened every hearth and home on Ger- 
man soil, and the spirit of German nation- 
alism will never rest until it is made sure 
that this menace is averted from the chil- 
dren's children of the soldiers of today. But 
the physical devastation of German prov- 
inces is not the only danger against which 
the people firmly demands protection. It 
suffered too long from the checking of Ger- 
man enterprise by the diplomatic alliance of 
its adversaries under English control. The 
European war, after all, began not at Sera- 

46 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

jevo but at Algeciras. England ruled the 
waves, England ruled the colonies, England 
ruled the canals, England ruled the cables, 
and finally it ruled the neighbors of Ger- 
many. 

The German nation feels such pressure in- 
tolerable. Its nationalistic resolution is not 
only to protect Germany against the mili- 
tarism of Russia, which is eager to expand, 
but against the diplomatism of England, which 
is eager to prevent everybody else from ex- 
panding. Yet tariffs and custom unions, ma- 
chine guns and cruisers, laboratories and or- 
ganizations will not be sufficient to secure 
such national safety. Not only the economic 
and political, but most of all the cultural and 
moral preparedness will be needed. A stub- 
born belief is essential, a belief in the unique 
human value of German traits, achievements 
and ideals. The new nationalist feels that the 
Germans have too much admired everything 
foreign, and imitated the cultural fashion 
from everywhere. This is the inheritance of 
long ages of German political infirmity. 
Germany has grown strong and the German 
must at last learn to have the courage of his 
own convictions. Only this faith in the na- 

47 



TOMORROW 

tive character, only this education to national 
pride, can prepare the country for an age 
of safety and honor. 

But moral uniqueness is not egotistic con- 
ceit, and joyful belief in national values is not 
a blindness to the noble traits of other na- 
tions nor a narrow prejudice against their 
mission. No German fancies that English 
or French, Italian or Russian civilization 
can be crushed, and no German plays with 
the wish that such a misfortune befall man- 
kind. More than that, with open eyes he 
foresees that the nationalism in all the other 
European states will increase powerfully 
too. Victory or defeat will not change this 
outcome: from Finland to Spain the be- 
lief in the native soil, in the native traits, in 
the native traditions and in the native mis- 
sion, will grow and flourish, for the roots of 
European nationalism have been drenched 
with the blood of millions of heroes. And 
America ? 

But America is too big for a mere post- 
script. Whoever writes down America must 
take a large new letter sheet. Hence I shall 
leave the United States of America for my 
next epistle — a Swedish steamer goes in three 

48 



THE NEW NATIONALISM 

days, but the Danish ship today may still 
carry, besides all this political wisdom, most 
cordial greetings from my family to yours. 

Faithfully yours, 
H. M. 



m 

NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

My dear Friend: 

I do not remember: did I ever tell you 
about my queer experience at the Interna- 
tional Peace Conference in Carnegie Hall in 
New York nine years ago? It impressed it- 
self on my mind, as I think it was the only 
occasion when I ever was scolded like a little 
schoolboy before a large jubilant audience. 
Mr. Carnegie presided. After some effer- 
vescent peace speeches I was to present the 
German standpoint, and my address was a 
sincere effort to interpret Germany's deep 
desire for peace, and yet to characterize the 
threatening realities around her. I insisted, 
above all, that clear understanding is neces- 
sary, and that nobody understands the Ger- 
man nation who fancies, as some speakers 
had done, that Germany feels her army as an 
intolerable burden. The truth is, I said, that 

50 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

the German people loves its army and con- 
siders it a splendid school of training and 
discipline and is convinced that only a thor- 
ough preparedness can save the country 
from the European menace. Then Mr. Car- 
negie arose, and forgetting that he was the 
chairman entered into a most formidable 
speech of reply. He was too old, he said, 
still to learn from a professor. He knew bet- 
ter ; he knew that the German army and this 
so-called state of preparedness is the misery 
and the ruin of the country, and every Ger- 
man has no wish but to escape from such 
military servitude. America is not the place, 
he shouted, with the frantic applause of the 
galleries, to proclaim such medieval ideas. 
Military preparedness is everywhere in the 
world only the cover for a spirit of aggres- 
siveness. America is the land of peace, and 
is the good friend of every nation on earth. 
The louder he shouted the more jubilant the 
balconies became, and the more I was ex- 
pected to sink through the floor from shame. 
I do not blame the dear old man in the 
least. He wrote me a beautiful letter the 
next day and gave me a few weeks later half 
a million marks for a research institute in 

51 



TOMORROW 

Berlin. But that hour in Carnegie Hall has 
often flitted through my mind in the last few 
months when I heard oratory against peace 
at any price, or stood on the sidewalk for 
hours to see the preparedness parades pass 
by and finally in New York and Boston to 
see the regiments march out to fight in Mex- 
ico. Yet this doubleness of soul was not a 
surprise to me. I always felt this contradic- 
tion in the mind of the American public. 
Twelve years ago in my first effort to ana- 
lyze American life from a psychological point 
of view I wrote in my book "The Ameri- 
cans": "In the attitude of the Americans 
toward foreign affairs the love of peace and 
the delight in war combine to make a contrast 
which has rarely been seen. Doubtless there 
is an apparent contradiction here, but this 
contradiction is the historic mark of the na- 
tional American temperament and it is not 
to be supposed that the contradiction is 
solved by ascribing these diverse opinions to 
diverse elements in the population, by saying 
that one group of citizens is more warlike, 
another more peaceful. The most character- 
istic feature is that just those who show the 
love for war most energetically are never- 

52 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

theless concerned and most earnestly so for 
the advance of peace." At that early date 
I continued: "President Eoosevelt is the 
most striking example of the profound com- 
bination of these opposing tendencies in one 
human breast." In the same spirit I said: 
"Everything works together under the pro- 
tection of the American constitution to pro- 
duce a splendid home in the new world for 
peace. America is the one world power 
which makes for peace and it will only de- 
pend on the future growth of this nation, 
which has been ordained to become such an 
example, whether the idea of peace will fin- 
ally prevail throughout the world, over the 
immoral settlement of disputes by mere force 
of arms. All this is not merely the pro- 
gram of a party, but the confession of 
faith of every American. It has impressed 
itself so fully on the consciousness of the 
American people that it gives to the whole 
nation a feeling of moral superiority. And 
this conviction is so admirable that it has 
always been contagious, and all Europe has 
become quite accustomed to considering the 
republic across the water as the firmest par- 
tisan of peace. The republic has in fact been 

53 



TOMORROW 

this, is now and always will be so, while the 
riddle is — how it can be such a friend of peace 
when it was conceived in war, has settled its 
most serious problems by war, has gone to 
war again and again, has almost played with 
declarations of war, is at war today and pre- 
sumably will be at war many times again." 
But while the lion-like and the lamb-like 
tendencies have always been together in the 
American mind, there are periods in which 
the one prevails and periods in which the 
other triumphs. No doubt the martial spirit 
has again today taken hold of the American 
people; and yet the military training and 
preparing and fighting are this time only a 
part of a greater movement. The turn of 
the nation against actual, possible or imagi- 
nary enemies is only an expression of the re- 
markable growth of a new nationalism. The 
uprising of the people in arms was no less, 
perhaps even more powerful, in 1898. The 
liberation of Cuba stirred more enthusiasm 
than the cleaning up of Mexico ; but the mili- 
tary movement of those days was isolated; 
it was a political task which had to be per- 
formed. The uprising against Spain was not 
a part of a larger movement. This time army 

54 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

and navy, party politics and government are 
all subordinated to a much greater issue than 
the disorder on the southern boundaries. 
The true issue is Americanism, and that 
means exactly the type of nationalism which 
has grown in Europe in the last decade, which 
led to the European war and which will swell 
as never before when the war is over. 

No doubt the movement came over the 
ocean. American nationalism had been sub- 
dued in the last ten years. The beginning of 
the century had been a period of struggle for 
social improvement, a time of muckraking 
and industrial readjustments, a time of 
progressive political thought and most of all 
a time of luxury and enjoyment. In periods 
of such a type the voice of nationalism is 
little heard. But suddenly all this has 
changed. The sympathies with the belligerent 
countries threatened to separate the racial 
elements in the United States; the issue 
of true Americanism became unavoidable. 
Moreover the uproar in Europe forced the 
idea of a possible clash on the excited imag- 
ination of the people and the reaction was 
a terrorized feeling of unpreparedness. But 
it is hardly necessary to seek one or another 

55 



TOMORROW 

special cause. We all know this world war 
was from the beginning really a war of the 
world. No country remained unshaken, no 
country could remain unstirred by the trum- 
pet call of nationalism with which the genius 
of history awoke mankind to an age of new 
inspirations. No doubt American nation- 
alism has and always will have its character- 
istic features, just as the nationalism of Rus- 
sia is not that of France and that of Germany 
not that of England. But fundamentally it 
remains the same; and even when public 
opinion in America endeavors to emphasize 
that its nationalistic aims are better than 
those of other lands, it simply speaks the 
language which is heard in every country and 
proves by it that this difference is an illusion. 
To be sure we hear that America's prepar- 
ation is not militaristic, because the country 
would never enter into an aggressive war, but 
would fight only in self-defense. But no Eu- 
ropean country has ever pretended to have an 
army for any other purpose. The whole 
phraseology remains the same. When South 
America tried to bring about arbitration be- 
tween the United States and Mexico, the 
Washington government declined emphati- 

56 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

cally because the honor of America was in- 
volved and therefore no arbitration was pos- 
sible. The honor of the country was involved : 
that was the battle cry in Austria and then in 
Eussia, and so on. Ten years ago every Amer- 
ican felt sure that the true honor of the coun- 
try demanded first of all to avoid the use of 
the elastic word honor in any conflict with an- 
other power. Today every American feels 
just as sure that the true honor of the coun- 
try demands : to look on every conflict with a 
foreign power first of all from the stand- 
point of national honor. The one was right 
and the other is right; the one was felt in 
full sincerity, and the other controlled by mo- 
tives no less high. The times have simply 
changed. The new nationalism has swept 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

It was most natural that the nationalistic 
awakening led first of all to the nation-wide 
cry for military preparedness. As you have 
visited America repeatedly, you know how 
the public loves exaggeration and how every 
new campaign is likely to show hysteric fea- 
tures. The press and the film and the orators 
have been outdoing one another and as — 
fortunately for American unity, unfortu- 

57 



TOMORROW 

nately for American soberness — nobody- 
dares or nobody cares to resist the fashion 
of the day, the much despised old world arma- 
ment has suddenly been made the prescrip- 
tion of every class and of every party. When 
the preparedness parades were organized 
they came too late to convince anybody. No 
on-looker was left who did not beforehand 
agree with the paraders. To be sure, it was 
not difficult to demonstrate the actual un- 
preparedness, and when it came to the first 
expedition to Mexico the lack of equipment 
was still more alarming than had been sup- 
posed. The Bull Moose party platform went 
furthest: " Preparedness in arms requires a 
navy restored to at least second rank in bat- 
tle efficiency, a regular army of two hundred 
and fifty thousand men fully armed and 
trained as the first line land defense, and sys- 
tematic military training adequate to organ- 
ize with promptness a citizen soldiery sup- 
plied, armed and controlled by the national 
government. In our democracy every male 
citizen is charged with the duty of defending 
his country." The call of the two old par- 
ties sounded a little fainter, and yet a thor- 
ough and complete national defense, ready 

58 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

for any emergency, appeared equally impor- 
tant at the St. Louis and at the Chicago con- 
vention. 

Psychologically it was especially interest- 
ing to watch how the need, as soon as it was 
practically felt, was bolstered up with re- 
publican arguments. In the early days of 
the European war the German armies had 
been denounced vehemently as the instru- 
ment of dynastic interests and the German 
nation was pitied for being forced into 
the army service by brutal autocrats. Of 
course, it seemed fitting that such tyrannical 
conscription should yoke the empire of the 
czar too; but no western country could look 
on such army service otherwise than as a 
menace to freedom and democracy. Public 
opinion almost forgot that democratic France 
had prepared still more eagerly than Ger- 
many, demanding three years of service from 
everybody where Germany demands one or 
two years only. It was forgotten too that in 
poor Germany, where the true people is said 
to hate this army service, no less than two 
million volunteers insisted on being enlisted 
in addition to the gigantic army of regulars 
and reservists. Those who knew the spirit 

59 



TOMORROW 

of Germany protested at that time and as- 
sured the American world that the German 
army is a most democratic institution. To- 
day the whole American nation harps on this 
string. Indeed what can be more democratic 
than that each man, rich and poor, educated 
and uneducated, be expected to offer his mind 
and body for the defense of his country? 

But those who knew added that the Ger- 
mans considered their army service not only 
a technical means of defense, but as the best 
school for efficient manhood and self-disci- 
pline. American public opinion has finally 
come around to this argument too. The last 
number of the Army and Navy Journal 
speaks frankly of "the fact that we need in 
the United States some force more powerful 
than our present educational system to serve 
as a corrective of the appalling disregard of 
law and of life's amenities." In fact General 
Wood said only the other day in the course 
of a public address that "military training 
would probably have a good effect toward 
lowering the excessively high murder rate in 
this country. . . . Officers on recruiting duty 
are getting to be more and more of the opin- 
ion that the freedom of contact for growing 

60 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

lads afforded by large cities must be checked 
in some way, and look toward compulsory 
military service as a corrective, disciplining 
force of no mean ability as a power for good. ' ' 
' ' Compulsory military service may as yet be 
distasteful to many Americans, but there is a 
slowly growing belief in its power as a cor- 
rective of general public conduct, at least, 
that may soon crystallize into a definite ac- 
tion for its introduction into this country. 
The fact that New York State has now made 
it a law to a certain degree is one of the most 
signal evidences of the growth of this idea 
that has yet come to pass." The demand for 
preparedness with its democratic arguments 
is not the only symptom of the new American 
nationalism, which will make the so-called 
democratic rebukes of autocratic Germany 
appear superficial and prejudiced. Even the 
detestable and despised European barbarism 
of gas bombs was taken as a matter of course 
as soon as the papers announced the Amer- 
ican gas bomb experiments when the troops 
marched against Mexico. Surely, however 
little America may be actually ready for 
warfare, it has shown that it is ready for 
war. 

61 



TOMORROW 

I know not a few in Germany believed 
that the American Government was playing 
a game of blufr when it threatened Germany 
with war. It was the good luck of the Ger- 
man nation that its responsible leaders 
made moderation triumphant. Not Lansing 
but Bethmann-Hollweg secured the peace be- 
tween Germany and America. And do not 
forget that America would have gone into 
this war with perfect knowledge that no Ger- 
man had the slightest feeling of hostility 
against America and that every one of those 
belligerent German acts about which Amer- 
ica had reason to complain were regretted 
by the Germans too, as far as the harm to 
non-belligerents was concerned. Moreover 
it was at an hour at which the first indigna- 
tion had long since died out and the issues 
had become abstract and technical ones, the 
Americans insisting that the submarines 
must behave in accordance with the interna- 
tional prescriptions agreed upon long before 
submarines existed, and the Germans claim- 
ing that here, as in every field, the new tech- 
nique must lead to new international rules. 
You remember that at one stage of the great 
contest a compromise seemed almost reached 

62 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

— it was when Lansing proposed that the sub- 
marines might treat the armed merchant 
ships as warships. Indeed the psychological 
issue must not be confused by bringing in 
the American regret over the lost lives. A 
few months after the Lusitania the Eastland 
sank in the harbor of Chicago. It was tor- 
pedoed by carelessness and negligence. Ten 
times more Americans lost their lives there, 
and yet within a short time the Eastland and 
the drowned victims were forgotten. Re- 
cently the railways posted a placard saying 
that in the foregoing year five thousand two 
hundred and forty-seven Americans lost their 
lives trespassing on railroad property. This 
could be easily avoided, but who cares! Ten 
times more die from the neglect of the sim- 
plest hygienic measures in factories and 
mines. No; it was not the question of the 
lost lives; it was strictly a question of the 
abstract principle of right. But Germany 
too certainly believed itself in the right. It 
took the stand that when millions fight 
against millions and a country like Germany 
has to defend itself against a fivefold su- 
periority it has no moral right to surren- 
der its most effective weapon because unin- 

63 



TOMORROW 

tended harm, in spite of the hest will, may- 
befall a neutral. That standpoint may be 
wrong. It is again an abstract legal ques- 
tion. If two great nations differ with re- 
gard to rights, it is exactly the condition un- 
der which arbitration would have appeared 
the only justified solution to the Americans 
of a few years ago. But the newspapers 
stood behind the President when he insisted 
on using force instead of peaceful means. 
For it is force when war is threatened 
against a people whom its enemies are trying 
to starve by a blockade and to crush by the 
armies of nine nations. Yet the President 
could not think otherwise and the papers 
could not take another stand, because the 
wave of nationalism had swept away the 
"old-fashioned" ideas. 

But here, as in Europe, the clamor of the 
new nationalism is not only for military and 
political, but for economic and cultural pre- 
paredness as well. Of course, throughout 
the last century the plea for the protective 
tariff has made the most of the argument 
that home industries ought to be strength- 
ened. The Republican planks have always 
been in this sense nationalistic, while the 

64 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

Democrats replied with humanistic argu- 
ments. But this traditional support of do- 
mestic industries was demanded only in the 
interest of high wages and higher dividends. 
The cheap importations were to be kept from 
the shores. The years of war have added an 
entirely different motive, which has naturally 
intensified the economic nationalism and has 
given to it a much deeper meaning. Only 
through the war has the American nation 
discovered that its material freedom depends 
upon unhampered exchange with other na- 
tions, and that means upon the goodwill of 
the world. This time only a fraction, only 
central Europe, was cut off; and yet it was 
sufficient to remind the large merchant and 
the small housekeeper ever so often that 
their routine supply comes from everywhere. 
The doctors missed their drugs, the manu- 
facturers their dyestuffs, the publishers 
their paper, and so on. The nationalistic 
plea for expansion of the home industries 
now meant a demand for the undisturbed 
comfort of the nation in time of danger. 

But war opened other economic perspec- 
tives too. Peace will come and with it the 
greatest industrial strife which history has 

65 



TOMORROW 

seen. Europe will be poor, but economically 
not crippled. On the contrary, the factories 
which have been kept busy with ammunition 
for war will turn with full power to the sup- 
plies for peace, and the men who return from 
the trenches will be ready to work for small 
wages. America will have the gold which 
has flowed from Europe during the war; 
Europe will have an unheard-of abundance 
of wares for export. The market is always 
neutral; buyers and sellers do not want to 
make political capital, but money. Will 
America be powerful enough to withstand 
the storm 1 ? Will peace in Europe mean in- 
dustrial war for the United States? Only a 
farsighted legislative policy can promise sta- 
bility: a truly scientific treatment of the 
tariff question, not the amateurish one by 
lobby-ridden committees, can help. Too long 
have the selfish interests of influential indus- 
trial groups controlled the market policy of 
the land; the interest of the nation as such 
must become the new call. The man in the 
mill too defends his country and a real na- 
tionalism must become decisive in the world 
where the dollar rules. New labor laws, new 
corporation statutes and a new policy which 

66 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

favors a strong merchant marine cannot be 
delayed any longer. 

The problems have become the more urgent 
as the American is quite aware that in these 
unhappy days a wall has arisen between 
English and Latin America. The feelings of 
South and Central America were on the side 
of mangled Mexico. Their latent instincts 
against the patronizing attitude of the 
United States have been reenforced by the 
punitive expedition. Why? Simply because 
Latin America is also a part, and a big part 
of this one political economic universe which 
has been swept by the nationalistic tornado. 
North Americans know that the hoped-for 
expansion of trade and of concessions in 
Latin America will be for a long while 
hindered as a result of the Villa-Car ranza 
mischief. Nor does China look promising 
since Japan and Russia have joined hands. 
America must find its economic strength in 
itself. 

This will toward nationalism has affected 
even the inner life ; it could not be otherwise. 
To be sure, the great words about American 
leadership, which gave impulse to the na- 
tionalistic platform discussions of state 

67 



TOMORROW 

rights and industries, could not well be ap- 
plied in the sphere of spiritual achievements. 
The educated American knows and regrets 
that the national work in art, literature and 
music, in science and scholarship, in social, 
moral and religious constructive thought has 
not as yet fulfilled the earnest hopes of the 
world. He feels that it does not lack merit, 
but it does lack distinction and true signifi- 
cance. French paintings, German music and 
English poems have, after all, been dominant 
in America. Many remedies have been pre- 
scribed. It can be clearly foreseen that the 
prescription of tomorrow will be a moral pro- 
tective tariff against cultural importation. 
Let us go back to our own classics of the 
golden Boston age instead of yielding to 
the lure of European decadence. Let 
us suppress the university which has en- 
croached on us from the continent and let us 
put our emphasis again on the old American 
college. Even the scenario contests for the 
film demand no foreign plots and settings: 
let us be thoroughly American. ''Our sons 
and daughters should be educated here and 
not abroad." Nationalism has won the day 
west of the Atlantic ocean as well as east. 

68 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

Yet, my old friend, you have studied Amer- 
ica so carefully on your various visits that 
you probably feel that something must be 
wrong with this equation. To say American 
nationalism equals European makes the cal- 
culation decidedly too simple. The Amer- 
ican nationalism of the 1916 type involves 
a certain inner difficulty with which the whole 
nation is wrestling more or less subcon- 
sciously. The difficulty lies in the very idea 
of Americanism. Each of the European peo- 
ples wants to protect with body and soul a 
nationality which is made sacred to them by 
the common historical tradition. Now even 
here in Massachusetts, where I am writing 
to you, a state which is prouder of its fruit- 
ful past than any other in the Union; even 
here two-thirds of the inhabitants were 
either born in foreign lands or born from 
foreign parents. Americans are not held to- 
gether by a common past in the way of the 
European peoples. In a historic sense they 
all are immigrants — it makes no difference 
whether they arrived yesterday or the day 
before yesterday, and whether they came 
from English-speaking lands or not. The 
essential point is that however early their 

69 



TOMORROW 

forefathers arrived, they all are still con- 
scious of their particular European ancestry. 
Nor is it the soil to which American pa- 
triotism is attached; it lacks that fervor 
which the European feels as a result of two 
thousand years and more of history. The mi- 
gration in America is still more characteristic 
than the immigration. Plenty of exceptions 
exist, but the average American is only 
loosely connected with the soil on which he 
was born. Americanism is not that love for 
the past and not that race affection for the 
natives of a special soil in the European 
sense: Americanism is — and the best men of 
the country feel it with their whole heart — 
an idea, a principle, a task which is to be 
fulfilled by work in common. 

Who can doubt that this gives a wonder- 
ful meaning to American nationalism, worthy 
of the enthusiasm of sturdy men who are 
ready to live and to die for it ! But it lacks 
certain elements familiar in the French or 
Italian, German, Russian or British nation- 
alism. It puts the emphasis on the outer 
framework of the national life. The Ameri- 
can patriot aims toward the outer protection 
and prosperity of all who have joined in the 

70 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

common task, and takes care that the laws 
and the technique of the common life give 
to everybody equal opportunity and rights. 
But such American nationalism, confined to 
a principle, can be only little concerned with 
the unfolding of an inherited national soul. 
Those faint efforts for cultural Americanism 
have therefore always had more the char- 
acter of caprice than of creation ; they stirred 
the dilettant more than the genius. It was 
quite consistent when nationalists tried to 
develop really American music from the old 
melodies of the Indians, but it was some- 
what embarrassing for all acquainted with 
the fate of these only Americans who did not 
feel themselves immigrants. If Ameri- 
canism is essentially the realization of a 
principle through certain outer forms of gov- 
ernment, law, organization and physical pro- 
tection, then surely it ought not to be opposed 
to the loving care for the inner traits and 
inherited cultural gifts of the various racial 
elements, however diverse they may be. 

But more important is another element of 
the complex situation. The new nationalism 
demonstrates itself as such by its readiness 
to fight for the national good. This good is 

71 



TOMORROW 

a system of principles; but these principles 
demand that America shall not fight, but 
work in peace toward justice. The princi- 
ples which have inspired America are indi- 
vidualistic and humanistic; to make war for 
them or even to emphasize the nationalistic 
character of those who defend them means 
to crush the individualism and to deny the 
humanism. The new Americanism is there- 
fore not like all those new nationalisms in 
Europe, simply a new underscoring of the 
old nationalistic feeling, but it is essentially 
the opposite of the best in the old Ameri- 
canism. It is not by chance that the new 
preparedness leaders try to make the most 
out of the wornout argument that armament 
secures peace. The old Americanism spoke 
quite differently, and its echo is by no 
means unheard today. Preparedness tempts 
to hasty declarations of war. "Under the 
clever catch-cry of national honor a vast 
movement toward an utterly undemocratic 
imperialism is daily gaining strength. 
Democracy and the 'big stick' can never live 
long side by side." This is the language of 
another time. If the country had wished to 
test these two state philosophies in a battle 



NATIONALISM IN AMERICA 

of votes, it would have nominated Roosevelt 
and Bryan as the two opposing candidates. 
They are the real leaders for and against the 
new nationalism. That a Bryan was impos- 
sible and that a Roosevelt was therefore not 
necessary as the opponent, is a symptom of 
the undeniable victory of the new nationalism 
in American life. 

But I have not yet spoken of the strangest 
feature — the pathetic outbreak against the 
Americans of German descent. I know it will 
be a short episode and the tragedy of unfair- 
ness will soon appear as a comedy of errors. 
But you asked me for social psychology: by 
no means let us overlook the pogrom of the 
hyphen. I am afraid, as the British censor 
has kept the American papers away from 
you, that you may not even understand what 
a hyphen has to do with politics. Well, you 
must put the hyphen between quotation 
marks, and if you put after it three exclama- 
tion marks and a question mark you have the 
whole stoiy of our political punctuation. I 
shall explain it all to you in my next letter, 
and remain today, with unhyphenated feel- 
ings, Sincerely yours, 

H. M. 
73 



IV 



NATIONALISM AND THE GERMAN- 
AMERICANS 

My dear Friend : 

Only yesterday I wrote to you a long let- 
ter to go on this morning's steamer about 
the new nationalistic movement in America, 
and as the next Swedish ship will not leave 
before next week I had not planned to write 
again until some days had passed. But a 
torrent of rain keeps me in the house, dark 
clouds hang low over the ocean, thunder rolls 
in the distance — a gray sky over a gray sea ! 
The day is hopeless for the sailing trip which 
I had planned, but it is just the day to stay 
at my desk and to write to you the promised 
story about the German- Americans — a gray 
sky over a gray sea. 

Yes, my dear friend, it is a story of pa- 
thetic suffering. You, over in Germany, 
from morning to night send your thoughts 

74 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 

and your sympathy to those millions who 
stand in the trenches. You are not aware 
that there may be trenches and curtains of 
fire and poisonous gases in peaceful lands, 
and that the suffering there and the pain may 
be worse than in the heat of the battle. The 
recent ill-tempered outbreak against the 
Americans of German descent is one of the 
saddest chapters of American history. You 
know I personally am not touched by it; 
hence I can speak about it with the objec- 
tivity of an outside observer and truly as a 
psychologist. I am not an American and 
have never intended to become one; I am 
politically a German and nothing else. It 
is true in the last two years I have been at- 
tacked publicly again and again for remain- 
ing a German. I cannot help it. I did not 
come here because I liked Germany less ; and 
I did not come here at my own desire. You 
remember I was a young professor in South 
Germany when America called me to develop 
interest in scientific psychology. William 
James wrote to me in the name of Harvard 
that they needed me. I came from a sense 
of duty, but the readiness to help in the scien- 
tific work could not possibly have been a 

75 



TOMORROW 

reason to change my nationality ; and it was 
a matter of course that I made the condition 
that I remain a German citizen. 

After coming here my interest in the land 
grew steadily. A new life task became 
coupled with my scientific work; I tried to 
interpret German ideals to America and 
American ideals to Germany, and to work 
toward friendly relations between the two 
countries, both of which I had learned to see 
with the eyes of love. Whenever I was asked 
to accept academic places in Europe, my 
American colleagues who insisted on my 
staying here were successful, because I felt 
that this task of cultural intermediation de- 
manded my remaining in America. But 
surely all this would have been spoiled if I 
had simply thrown overboard my native citi- 
zenship and had become a full-fledged Ameri- 
can. My activity during the war has nat- 
urally followed from the past; after trying 
for twenty years to fight the prejudices of 
the European continent against America, I 
had to combat the American prejudices 
against Germany when the war broke out and 
American public opinion became subservient 
to Germany's enemies. But whatever I did 

76 



NATIONALISM AND GERM AN- AMERICANS 

was frankly done as a German. The rebuke 
to the Americans of German descent has 
therefore not even any reference to me per- 
sonally, and I can see the German- American 
struggles from the spectator's seat. 

I do not know whether the German readers 
have had a chance to study the platforms 
which the convention month brought to 
American politics, and the declarations of 
the various leaders. But if the cutting of the 
cables has abolished this kind of news in the 
fatherland the loss was not great, as Repub- 
licans and Democrats, and, as long as they 
existed, Progressives, had all essentially the 
same intentions: they preached the new na- 
tionalism in three hardly different dialects. 
Especially with regard to the German- 
Americans, however much the word itself 
was avoided, the attitude of all three parties 
and their leaders was fundamentally the 
same. "We condemn as subversive of this 
nation's unity and integrity and as destruc- 
tive of its welfare the activities and designs 
of every group or organization, political or 
otherwise, that has for its object the ad- 
vancement of the interest of a foreign power, 
whether such object is promoted by intimi- 

77 



TOMORROW 

dating the government, a political party or 
representatives of the people, or which is cal- 
culated and tends to divide our people into 
antagonistic groups and thus to destroy the 
complete agreement and solidarity of the 
people and that unity of sentiment and na- 
tional purpose so essential to the perpetuity 
of the nation and its free institutions." 
President Wilson wrote this sentence, the 
Democratic convention indorsed it; but with 
more Anglo-Saxon words Roosevelt might 
have written it and the Progressives might 
have enthusiastically accepted it. Their 
plank about the "unified spirit of this cosmo- 
politan people and deep loyalty and undi- 
vided allegiance to America" has just the 
same meaning. And Mr. Hughes in his first 
declaration of principles says: "I stand for 
an Americanism that knows no ulterior pur- 
pose, for a patriotism that is single and com- 
plete. Whether native or naturalized, of 
whatever race or creed, we have but one 
country and we do not for an instant toler- 
ate any division of allegiance." If the real 
intention is filtered out of the three creeds, 
it comes to the simple formula: Let us haze 
the German- Americans. 

78 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 

To be sure, wise vote-seekers do not utter 
such stinging words without adding at once : 
' ' Present company excepted ! ' ' They will as- 
sure the well behaved Americans of German 
descent that the indignation is really turned 
only against those few whose hearts are di- 
vided. Indeed everybody sympathizes with 
those shining examples of German-born men 
who have signed the ''Declaration of the 
Five Hundred" imploring America to help 
the Allies against the barbaric Germans. 
But while the men of this type are excepted, 
the rebuke is after all hurled not against this 
or that culprit but practically against the 
German-American masses. The German- 
American Alliance alone, against which the 
sharpest arrows have been shot, has three 
million members. Its sentiment is still more 
widespread. Surely ten million people be- 
tween the Atlantic and the Pacific share that 
German-American emotion which the Hot- 
spurs of Anglo-Americanism are deriding 
and denouncing. But does that mean that 
the rebuke is deserved? Does it mean that 
true Americanism is threatened by the de- 
scendants of those who came from German 
shores? 

79 



TOMORROW 

The discussion about the German-Ameri- 
cans has been so passionate that even the 
most patent differences have been lost from 
sight. You would expect that at least one 
demarcation line would be kept clearly in 
view: the political question ought to be 
sharply separated from the cultural one. 
Let me disentangle the issues on both sides 
of this line, and let me speak first of the 
strictly political problem. Have the Amer- 
icans of German extraction misbehaved in a 
political sense and has their public activity 
during these two years of war justified the 
convulsive upheaval ? You know I have been 
in pretty intimate contact with the German- 
American work and I know all its classes and 
layers, its organizations and its leaders, its 
papers and its literature. As I am speaking 
here, friend to friend, I should not hesitate 
to blame them where blame is deserved, and 
indeed I have said publicly that the register 
of mistakes which the German-Americans 
have made in the last twenty-five years is 
long. But with the same frankness I can as- 
sure you that since the beginning of the war 
they must be entirely acquitted of the one 
crime which alone is here in the center ; they 

80 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS 

have never been anything but loyal Ameri- 
cans and every accusation to the contrary is 
a fundamental misunderstanding and a cruel 
injustice. 

I should not be sincere if I were not to 
acknowledge from the start that there are 
many German-Americans who ought never 
to have become American citizens and who 
do feel today that they have made a mistake 
in asking for naturalization papers. They 
joined a nation nearly a third of which has 
some German blood in its veins, in which 
millions keep German social traditions alive 
and which in its long history of bloody con- 
flicts has had not a single war with Ger- 
many. It never entered their minds that an 
hour might possibly come in which the land 
of their birth and the land of their lifework 
might force on them an inner struggle of 
conflicting feelings and duties. They be- 
lieved that they became citizens of a nation 
which had nothing but respect and friendship 
for Germany ; not a few feel almost as if the 
new homestead had been offered to them un- 
der false pretenses. Thousands seem re- 
solved to leave the country when the war is 
over — an exodus like that of the Huguenots 

81 



TOMORROW 

from France. Yet as long as the war lasts 
this class of naturalized German-Americans 
keeps quiet. They suffer without open com- 
plaint; they do not partake in any propa- 
ganda. 

Above all, it is a cruel falsehood when even 
serious papers repeat the silly claim that 
men of this type actually hold double citizen- 
ship. You know the new German laws allow 
a German in a foreign land, under excep- 
tional circumstances, to get permission of the 
government to keep his native citizenship in 
spite of his naturalization. But this refers 
only to less developed countries where the 
visitor intends to stay a short time, but is 
obliged to acquire the new citizenship for the 
pursuit of his affairs. This permission is 
never granted where the naturalization in- 
volves a formal repudiation of the home gov- 
ernment ; hence it is never given to Germans 
in America. No German-American holds 
German citizenship — and yet I know even 
this tale will not die out. It is much to be 
hoped that in the future our German fellow- 
countrymen will show the same thoughtful- 
ness and national pride in this question 
which the Englishmen and the Americans 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 

themselves possess. Thousands upon thou- 
sands of Americans live the greater part of 
their lives in Europe, but in Paris and Lon- 
don, in Berlin and Rome, they remain as a 
matter of course American citizens. The 
Englishmen in America generally stay sub- 
jects of the king. The famous novelist, Basil 
King, explained only recently in the New 
York Times why he never became naturalized 
in spite of living in the United States "off 
and on" ever since his childhood. The Ger- 
mans become assimilated too easily. But as 
their excuse it must be added that American 
nationalistic intolerance almost forces them 
to give up their inherited birthright. When 
Henry James became a British subject after 
living in England for forty years the Ameri- 
cans showed a nervous dislike of such dis- 
loyalty; but when a German resides in Amer- 
ica he is expected to change color at once and 
he becomes a target for suspicion if he shows 
no such inclination. 

Yet those Germans who since the outbreak 
of the war regret having become naturalized 
Americans certainly are the exception. An 
overwhelming majority of the Americans of 
German descent, born over there or here, are 

83 



TOMORROW 

proud of their citizenship. They love Amer- 
ica and American life and feel sure that they 
are among the most worthy elements of the 
community. And yet they have been hazed 
and maltreated, have lost their friends, have 
not seldom been economically ruined, have 
been dismissed from their positions, have 
been deprived of their professional clients, 
have been shaken off from the political par- 
ties, have been degraded as second-class citi- 
zens, have been abused as traitors to the 
land. What has happened? What was their 
crime 1 ? Have they really put the interests of 
Germany above those of the country to which 
they have sworn allegiance"? The jury of 
history will acquit them and will declare 
unanimously that they were not guilty of the 
wrong of which the man on the street and the 
man on the platform and, alas, the man in the 
presidential chair has accused them. It will 
be a somber chapter in the book of Ameri- 
can public life, and yet it offers no difficul- 
ties to psychological explanation. No, the 
events did not even bring any psychological 
surprises to those who understood the power 
of the press, the setting of the war and the 
temper of the Anglo-Saxons. 

84 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 

The millions of German-Americans who 
form the membership of the German societies 
all over the country have at no moment 
stopped being faithful American citizens. 
But they were unanimous in one demand of 
their heart : America must remain neutral in 
the European war, and must not support the 
English side against the Germans. Such na- 
tional impartiality was thinkable. It would 
not have excluded personal sympathies for 
the one or the other side ; but public opinion 
would have watched the terrific fight with sin- 
cere respect for both groups of nations, both 
of which sacrifice their lif eblood for their his- 
toric destiny. It happened otherwise. By a 
masterstroke of British politics America was 
deprived of direct news from Germany ; every 
bit of cable information and commentary 
from Europe was shaped and molded by the 
British mind. It was so easy in that first 
period of excitement to force on the world of 
printers ' ink news and views of the war which 
depicted Germany as a moral culprit and the 
Allies as flag-bearers of humanity. Those 
first weeks of heightened suggestibility were 
naturally decisive. As soon as the first 
fundamental anti-German turn of public 

85 



TOMORROW 

opinion was secured the British influence 
could easily grow from its own momentum. 
Indeed no individual editorial writer is to be 
blamed — no one in his place could have the 
strength to resist this country-wide power — 
no editorial reader is to be blamed for suc- 
cumbing to his paper, and no politician is to 
be blamed for serving those newspaper read- 
ers. Social imitation and financial interest 
did the rest to forge the British ring around 
the country. The Germans in the land, con- 
nected by millions of family ties with the 
fatherland and protected against distortions 
for political effect by thorough acquaintance 
with the German character, protested indig- 
nantly against that ruthless partiality. The 
tragic conflict was unavoidable : the German- 
Americans rejected the anti-German one- 
sidedness and as this onesidedness had be- 
come the creed and the passion of America, 
the German-Americans suddenly appeared 
anti-American. This is the psychological 
core. They had become "kaiserists"; they 
served Germany instead of their own country 
— a crushing accusation; and yet no act and 
no word can be offered as evidence. 

I saw the largest demonstration which the 
86 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 

German-Americans arranged. It was in 
Madison Square Garden when Bryan spoke. 
He had just resigned from the Cabinet and 
made his first speech before twenty thousand 
German-Americans. He denounced bitterly 
those who insisted on crossing the ocean on 
belligerent munition-carrying steamers; he 
shouted that it is their recklessness which 
endangers the peace between America and 
Germany. The applause was frantic. I 
had hardly believed that German-Americans 
could become so jubilant and so passionate. 
It was a storm of overwhelming enthusiasm. 
Twenty thousand flags were wildly waved; 
and yet every flag bore the stars and stripes 
— not a single man or woman showed a Ger- 
man flag. It was a demonstration of true 
American citizens ; they displayed their flags 
not in disloyalty to America, but as an appeal 
for a saner, safer and fairer America. 

Not a single German-American proposed 
at any time that America join the Central 
Powers. There would have been no lack of 
pretexts for such an appeal ; the common fight 
for the freedom of the sea would have been 
more in the spirit of American history than 
many a catchword with which the pro- Allies 

87 



TOMORROW 

filled the air. But the German-Americans 
did not try to stir up American fighting spirit 
against England ; they resented only that the 
others aimed to force America into the actual 
fight against Germany. "The Declaration 
of the Five Hundred," who, in burning words 
of hatred, tried to hunt the soul of the Ameri- 
can nation into a war for the interests of 
England, really did serve foreign countries 
more than the United States — and yet the 
German-Americans, who only served the 
peace of the land, were denounced as traitors. 
Thousands upon thousands of Americans en- 
listed in the Canadian brigade, swearing: "I 
will be faithful and bear true allegiance to 
his Majesty King George V"; already there 
are sixteen thousand American citizens ac- 
tually fighting at the front "in duty bound 
honestly and faithfully to defend his Maj- 
esty" — and yet the German- Americans are 
the faithless sinners with a "double alle- 
giance." 

It is true the German-Americans worked 
against the export of munitions, and it can- 
not be denied that if they had succeeded in 
their aim it would have helped the Germans 
somewhat and might have curtailed the divi- 
88 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS 

dends of some Americans. But surely the 
pacificists of many shades have taken the 
same ground; they were not anti- American 
when they appealed to America's sense of 
humanity. They were quite aware that the 
export was legally not forbidden and that 
those who sought the tremendous profits for 
American factories or who wanted to help 
the Allies by the sale of munitions were tech- 
nically on the safe side. But they knew that 
every country in Europe which really tried 
to be neutral had at once declared an em- 
bargo. They wanted their country to do what 
Spain and Holland, Switzerland and Sweden 
had done. Moreover they felt that the inter- 
national right to sell arms is meant to refer 
to the regular agencies of supply, but that it 
is not meant to welcome the remolding of the 
whole industrial life of a nation until war is 
fed from its every workshop. They feared 
that such an artificial change of the industrial 
system would later drive the country into 
superfluous wars, as the influence of the cap- 
ital engaged would work for the permanence 
of the ammunition demand. But most of all 
they saw with alarm that the European mas- 
sacre came no nearer to an end because Amer- 

89 



TOMORROW 

ica supplied the means for continuous slaugh- 
ter. They felt the fatal contrast between 
America's traditional peace professions and 
its sudden war trade. I know many German- 
Americans who would have protested no less 
against this bloodstained sale if the shells 
could have been shipped to both parties. 
Ought they to have protested less because 
only their own brothers and cousins were to 
be maimed and killed by it? 

The accusation that the German- Americans 
serve Germany more than America was the 
more unjust as it became daily more evident 
that their pro-German interpretation of the 
war was more important for their own po- 
sition in the country than for Germany's 
success in Europe. You know the German- 
Americans were the ridiculed "Dutchies" in 
the middle of the last century. Then came 
the Bismarck time and the German Empire 
and Germany's new strength in the world 
gave an entirely new position to the Ameri- 
can citizens of German descent. The immi- 
gration surged on; millions arrived. The 
German-American population became pros- 
perous, respected and welcome ; the low place 
of their past was filled by new large influxes 

90 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 

from southern and eastern Europe. But with 
the European war the moral credit of the 
German Empire was dwindling ; the malicious 
misinterpretation, spread with the technique 
of the modern press, lowered Germany and 
Austria in the estimation of the masses and 
this undermined the foundation on which the 
German-Americans had stood for a genera- 
tion. If the moral hatred against Germany 
remained unbridled, the honor of the Ger- 
man-Americans themselves would be sullied 
and tarnished. 

To prove to the world that the German 
race is not a barbaric stock meant to fight for 
the rank and good name of the Americans of 
German descent. Can patriotism forbid them 
to prove that they are worthy citizens of the 
nation? Or would they have shown them- 
selves worthier Americans if in coward fear 
they had succumbed to the slander and had 
tried to escape the consequences by besmirch- 
ing the land of their own birth or of their 
fathers 1 Not a trace of unpatriotic behavior 
can be found in that German- American pro- 
test movement, as long as it is not decreed 
that American nationalism is the same as 
British interest. No doubt, this Tory view 

91 



TOMORROW 

has benumbed and blunted many honest 
minds; and they believed sincerely that to 
be anti-British in this war meant to be anti- 
American. The charge of double allegiance 
against the German-Americans was there- 
fore most passionate wherever the British 
traditions are most forceful. Do you remem- 
ber from your schooldays the Hartford Con- 
vention of 1812! The New England States 
at that time sent their delegates to Hartford 
to work against the country's anti-British 
policy. It is claimed that not a few would 
have preferred to secede from the Union 
rather than to quarrel with England. A cen- 
tury later New England has again become the 
chief camping ground of the pro-Britishers, 
and Tremont Temple in Boston has been the 
national center of hatred for England's en- 
emies. Nowhere have the Americans of 
German descent been harassed as about the 
Charles River. It was only a poor comfort 
to them that the same circles treated the 
abolitionists in exactly the same way. 

A reaction to pro-British agitation and 
nothing else was that literature for the day 
which was mostly labeled German propa- 
ganda. Much of it was superficial and much 

92 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS 

was overheated, not a little was tasteless; 
but it was thoroughly honest and written 
throughout with more knowledge of facts 
than was shown in the attacks against which 
it was directed. On the whole it was de- 
cidedly effective ; hundreds of thousands cor- 
rected their unneutral views, and it was 
merely a well-known trick when the anti- 
Germans steadily assured the pro-German 
writers that they did damage to their own 
cause. It is a fact that much of the pro- 
German writing gained more ground than 
the pro-British literature; yet America is 
not a land in which books and pamphlets can 
win over the newspapers and magazines. 
But whatever the effect may have been, it is 
clear that such efforts did not violate the 
duties of citizenship. Every German-Amer- 
ican felt convinced that a further abuse of 
the German race would lead to internal con- 
flicts and that a war with Germany would be 
a horrible misfortune for America's inner 
peace and for its outer position. Was it not 
then his highest patriotic duty to utter his 
warning with the greatest possible vigor? 
Nobody considered it unpatriotic when men 
proclaimed, even passionately, their views 

93 



TOMORROW 

against war with Mexico ; those who warned 
against war with Germany surely served as 
well as they knew how the highest interests 
of honor and harmony in the American na- 
tion. They would have sinned against Amer- 
ican nationalism if they had kept silent from 
fear of the pro-Ally resentment. 

The indictment which the nationalists draw 
up against the pro-German propagandists 
contains, however, one more charge. It is 
claimed that Germany not only profits from 
the activity of these Americans, but controls 
and directs them. Of course, in excited times 
there is no limit to the absurdities which are 
honestly believed. Whenever some promi- 
nent Anglo-American made a venomous 
speech against the Germans, I received from 
well-meaning pro-German cranks in the coun- 
try letters of assurance that the speaker was 
suffering from senile atrophy if he was above 
seventy, and that he was bought with English 
money if he was below seventy years of age. 
In a similar way anti-German cranks are 
certain that Berlin pays for the propaganda 
of the German- Americans. But serious peo- 
ple ought not to take such gossip seriously. 
Those who are really familiar with the his- 

94 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 

tory of the efforts of Germany to come into 
contact with the public opinion of America 
know that they took systematic form about 
1898. The German ambassadors visited the 
American universities, the scholars from 
Germany attended American congresses, the 
Emperor's brother came to Washington, pro- 
fessorial exchanges were established, the 
Amerika-Institut in Berlin was organized, 
the chambers of commerce on both sides of 
the water did their share ; but in every move 
Berlin took care not to involve the German- 
Americans, so as not to suggest that a politi- 
cal double allegiance was possible for them. 
The war has not changed this policy of 
discretion. I do not want to tire you with de- 
tails of German-American politics, but it 
would be easy to show that not infrequently 
the interests of Germany have not even co- 
incided with the interests of the German- 
Americans and that the latter with natural 
instinct sought their own advantage without 
waiting for Germany to suggest another di- 
rection. For instance, when the national con- 
ventions were near, German- American ora- 
tory almost automatically turned against 
Wilson and Roosevelt, both of whom in bit- 

95 



TOMORROW 

ter words had denounced the so-called hy- 
phenated Americans. Their pride, yes, 
their self-respect, was hurt by the unfair 
aspersions on their loyalty as American citi- 
zens. Yet I cannot imagine that a Ger- 
man chancellor would have endorsed these 
harsh attacks on the President. He would 
have been less concerned with the rehabili- 
tation of the German-Americans than with 
the difficulties of the German Empire, and 
he would therefore first of all have counted 
with the fact that the President would under 
any circumstances still be in office for nearly 
a year. Hence he would probably have wished 
to avoid anything which would irritate the 
responsible leader of American politics dur- 
ing the decisive year of the war. Only 
through carelessness have German interests 
and German-American interests always been 
thrown together. A little more analysis 
would often have shown that the accusation 
of German- American dependence upon Ber- 
lin was not only unjust but illogical and 
absurd. 

Finally the confusion is aggravated when 
German- American policies are burdened with 
the debit account of those few German citi- 

96 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS 

zens who violated the laws of the country. 
Unable to hurry home for the defense of 
their fatherland, they were carried away by 
their fanatic patriotism until they neglected 
their nearest duties. It is difficult to say how 
many of these charges are backed by facts. 
The great trial against Tauscher, about whom 
we had heard the worst in the papers, ended 
with a perfect acquittal. But whatever may 
really have been attempted by a few German 
reservists, their errors should not be charged 
against the German-American masses. The 
political record of the American citizens of 
German extraction is perfectly clean; in 
every phase of this turbulent wartime they 
have sincerely served that which appeared to 
them the highest interest of their country. 
The nationalistic demand that America be 
first in the political thought of every Amer- 
ican citizen has been thoroughly realized in 
every act and word of theirs. When they 
acted together, they did not separate them- 
selves as a party or as a group which tries to 
influence American political life in favor of 
Germany; but, just like any other group of 
citizens with common interests, convictions 
and ideals, they entered into the midst of 

97 



TOMORROW 

the arena for a loyal patriotic fight in favor 
of eqnal rights for themselves, and, more 
than that, in favor of an American foreign 
policy of true independence. 

Does this clear the German-American in 
the eyes of the American nationalist? Surely 
not. The political actions of the "hyphen- 
ate" may not be treacherous; but his 
thoughts and feelings, his language and cus- 
toms, his attitude toward private and social 
problems, his tastes and interests, his whole 
cultural atmosphere, are claimed to be so dif- 
ferent that no merely political denial can 
whitewash him. He stands convicted of anti- 
national separatism, which may not start 
with a political program, but must end 
with political evil. What is the true situa- 
tion in this cultural, social and spiritual 
sphere? The arguments of the assailants are 
well known. You citizens of German de- 
scent, they proclaim, are welcome among us 
as long as you show your willingness to ac- 
cept our characteristic ideals and principles 
and to submit your German ideals and insti- 
tutions to those of your new home. You or 
your fathers left the old home because you 
liked the German ideals and institutions less 

98 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 

than ours ; as you are now profiting from the 
better things for which you longed, you must 
show your gratitude by uprooting every re- 
minder of your German beliefs. Otherwise 
you remain an alien in our borders in spite 
of your citizenship, and if all were acting in 
this way the nation would be torn in pieces. 
If at heart you even feel more sympathy 
with your fellow German-Americans than 
with the other citizens, you are a traitor to 
America, This country would soon be "a 
tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intri- 
cate knot of German- Americans, Irish- Amer- 
icans, Anglo-Americans, French-Americans, 
Scandinavian-Americans and Italian-Ameri- 
cans, each preserving its separate national- 
ity.* ' It would be the most certain way of 
preventing America from continuing as a na- 
tion at all. "The men who do not become 
Americans and nothing else are hyphenated 
Americans; and there ought to be no room 
for them in this country." 

The familiar tune of this Roosevelt march 
was whistled and harped and drummed and 
trumpeted through the land. The German- 
Americans, however, do not intend to parade 
in accord with its rhythm ; and yet their tune 
99 



TOMORROW 

is not at all the " Watch on the Rhine,' ' but 
"Columbia." They feel themselves just as 
good patriots as their detractors. This is 
their creed. Certainly, they say, every Ger- 
man-American must uphold the American 
idea. But Americanism is not the life philos- 
ophy of the New Englanders brought over 
from the British Islands and not the 18th 
century state philosophy brought over from 
France. Americanism centers in the demo- 
cratic faith that this great nation, unham- 
pered by the ideas of the past, will work out 
and develop its ideas and principles best 
through the free cooperation of all its citi- 
zens. This has been its vitalizing energy 
throughout its history, and this is the only 
security for its future as a true nation. Men 
and women of all European states and races 
have entered into the republic for common 
work. If one racial element were to claim 
that its tradition ought to be forced on the 
other parts of the population for historic 
reasons, true Americanism would be be- 
trayed. The saving thought of this land, 
which cannot be insisted on too often or 
too strongly, is that not England but all Eu- 
rope is America's mother country. 
100 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS 

But this gives to every racial part of the 
nation not only the right to contribute its own 
emotions and ideas and beliefs to the common 
life, but it puts on each a solemn duty and 
responsibility. Every element, from what- 
ever part of Europe it arrived, is morally 
obliged to enrich the nation with the very 
best and purest and most characteristic traits 
which it brought over the ocean. It would 
be a sin against the deepest spirit of Ameri- 
canism if anyone immigrated with the inten- 
tion to receive only, that is to imitate what 
he finds instead of giving with his full heart 
what he inherited and learned in his native 
land. But to contribute ideas and feelings to 
the community means to make them effec- 
tive by keeping them alive. Truly no greater 
duty falls to the Americans of German or 
Italian or English or Swedish descent than 
to supply the noblest and most ideal elements 
of the culture of Germany or Italy or Eng- 
land or Sweden to the nation which is to be 
spiritually enlarged day by day through this 
abundance of racial contributions. The com- 
mon land, the common law, the common po- 
litical organization and the common language 
give to the nation its outer framework and 

101 



TOMORROW 

outer unity ; the wonderful diversity of racial 
traits and talents and endeavors, all serving 
in balanced rivalry the common good, gives 
to it the unique American content. We men 
of German descent will not be found neglect- 
ful of this solemn historic obligation ; we shall 
keep the best features of German culture liv- 
ing in our souls, in our homes, in our chil- 
dren, in our fellow German- Americans, so as 
to do our share in the service to real Ameri- 
can nationalism. 

Those who profess such a creed and act 
under such an impulse surely correct one di- 
rect misstatement of their opponents. It is 
simply a fiction when it is claimed that the 
millions of German immigrants left their 
homes because they disliked German ideals 
and institutions. The little groups which 
came when Carl Schurz came did leave 
Germany in scorn. But with the founding 
of the German Empire this political dissatis- 
faction of the Germans ceased; their visions 
had come true. Then nobody had to leave 
in order to seek freedom; and yet the real 
flood of German immigrants came after 1871. 
Certainly some cowards came to escape ob- 
ligatory military service ; they probably will 
102 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 

now soon have to secure their safety again 
by emigrating, perhaps to China. But the 
real bulk of the German immigration was 
made up of those who came for economic rea- 
sons. Political dissatisfaction was felt in 
Germany only by the socialists; and they 
would surely not have sought America as a 
socialistic paradise, since Germany's indus- 
trial organization is so much nearer to the 
socialists' ideal than America's unbridled 
reign of capitalistic influence. The most cer- 
tain proof, however, of the unpolitical char- 
acter of the German exodus lies in the fact 
that it ceased when Germany had passed 
through the great change from an agrarian 
to an industrial state. This change, which 
offered ample support to the rapidly growing 
population, was completed in the nineties, 
and since that time German emigration to 
America has dwindled and the immigration 
to Germany has become larger than its emi- 
gration. 

Hence in general it can be laid down as a 
historic fact that the Germans did not come 
to this country from any dissatisfaction with 
the culture and institutions of their home 
land. They sought better wages or larger 

103 



TOMORROW 

farms, but they did not cross the ocean to 
find better state forms or larger ideals. Of 
course they knew what their pledge of alle- 
giance demanded, and they gladly adjusted 
themselves to the particular forms of the 
American government, the more as they well 
understood that an earnest belief in the need 
of republican government for America is not 
in the least a contradiction to an enthusiastic 
belief in imperial government for the Ger- 
man nation. Nor had they any reason to 
tear their inherited ideals from their soul 
out of mere gratitude; they knew that how- 
ever much they received they brought their 
brain and brawn, their education and their 
skill, and all was a loss to the country which 
had given it to them and a gain to the land 
which had received it. Most of them — who 
will deny it? — did not contemplate much, but 
simply did their daily work. Yet in the sub- 
conscious mind of everyone lingered the con- 
viction that he fulfilled his oath of allegiance 
best if he did not throw away his native 
treasures and did not waste the ideals of his 
first home, but made them helpful and in- 
fluential in the new home which he had 
learned to love and to admire. 

104 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN-AMERICANS 

These instincts of the unthinking coincide 
with the impartial views of the scientific so- 
ciologist. He cannot help seeing that the de- 
mand for a uniformity of thought and emo- 
tions in this recent mixture of races would 
involve a psychological impossibility. It 
would force on the individual an artificial in- 
hibition of natural tendencies, and where such 
suppression could be secured it would neces- 
sarily result in breaking the real spring of 
the personality. The outcome would be a 
shallow monotony in which the outer acts are 
uniform because no one has a right to unfold 
his own soul. All seeds of progress would 
then be dried up. It has been America's 
great good luck that no such misconstruction 
of nationalism interfered with the healthy 
development of the nation in its decisive cen- 
tury. Its wonderful progress was possible 
just because the American national mind 
could freely grow into a synthesis of many 
European characteristics. 

But this process is still at its beginning. 
He is an ill adviser of his nation who protests 
against this trend. The Puritans did not like 
and disapproved of music; they brought no 
talent for it to these shores. Would it have 
105 



TOMORROW 

been better for America if those who came 
after them had insisted that the American 
soul remain unmusical and that the love for 
music and the talent which the Germans, 
Austrians, French and Italians brought to 
the land be suppressed in order not to inter- 
fere with the national character? But it is 
not a question of the life of music; it is a 
question of the whole music of life. Who will 
disentangle today what in the American mind 
has come from this or from that racial 
source? Surely it was not England which 
filled the American temperament with its op- 
timism, with its joy in color, with its love 
for nature, with its exhilarating freshness 
or with its exuberant enthusiasm, and what 
not. The message of every European people 
has reached the heart of the American na- 
tion and has left its trace in the mental 
layer below consciousness. The realism and 
the idealism, the humanism and the individ- 
ualism, the spirit of joy and the spirit of 
service, the impulse to action and the love 
of thought, the trading mood and the fight- 
ing mood, were all equally needed to make 
the nation that unique power for good in the 
world. 

106 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS 

But every phase of history brings new ele- 
ments into the foreground; features of the 
national spirit and character which were sec- 
ondary at one period are paramount in an- 
other, until they are pushed backward again 
by other predominant traits. This makes it 
necessary that the contribution of one racial 
factor be more important at one time, those 
of another factor at another time. The trend 
of today and tomorrow, that is of the war 
time and still more of the time when at last 
peace comes, is, as we all must agree, the 
trend toward nationalism. Nationalism 
means the overcoming of mere individual- 
ism and of colorless humanism; nationalism 
means the emphasis on the characteristic 
features of the whole nation as such and the 
service of the individual to this unique na- 
tional work. But the belief in this devotion 
of the individual to the state, the subordina- 
tion of the person to the overpersonal na- 
tional genius, is exactly the central offering 
of the German- Americans. That is the ideal- 
istic creed which they learned in their nur- 
sery at the border of the Rhine, of the Elbe 
or of the Vistula, and they cannot have for- 
gotten it when they crossed the ocean. If 
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TOMORROW 

nationalism is really the stamp of the new 
America, the German- American contribution 
will be for the present the most significant 
and the most pregnant one. Not in the rear 
guard of the national army, but in the front 
rank is then their place, and their unpardon- 
able sin against Americanism would be if 
they were hiding their German soul instead 
of making it felt throughout the land. 

Yes, the years to come will be stirred by 
nationalism the world over, in America ex- 
actly as much as in every part of Europe; 
but the American nationalism can gain full 
strength only if the thoughts and emotions 
which the German-Americans brought over 
the sea become the foremost energy in Amer- 
ica's composite structure. The old English 
individualism must for the moment retreat 
in the American mind if nationalism with all 
its political, economic and cultural prepared- 
ness is to prevail. It must yield for today 
and tomorrow to the German idealism. Far 
from being the traitors, the men who are loyal 
to their best German traditions are really the 
most faithful servants of nationalistic Amer- 
ica. But the prognosis that nationalism will 
take the idealistic trend cannot be confined to 
108 



NATIONALISM AND GERMAN- AMERICANS 

America. It will be true of the whole world, 
as it is to shape itself after the war. It is 
only another aspect of the same fundamental 
fact if we acknowledge that next to the ener- 
getic nationalism which will arise every- 
where, a new idealism will come. 

My heart is so filled with the remembrance 
of all the bitter wrong - my German- American 
friends have had to go through during these 
dark days of war that I remained unaware of 
the changes around me while I was writing 
this long letter. I see that the gray sky over 
the gray sea has yielded to the sun, the clouds 
have disappeared and blue sky is joyfully re- 
flected in the ocean; I may still start on my 
sail. I know the somber clouds of life will 
also be vanquished by a radiant sun. May it 
come soon ; we long for it. In hearty friend- 
ship, 

Yours, 

H. M. 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

My dear Friend: 

You remember Bismarck once said, when 
a caller left him, that the man had spoken to 
him as if he were a mass-meeting. I am 
afraid that my letters to you may stir you to 
a similar comment. Yet you know that you 
yourself proposed the topics for my episto- 
lary sermons. If you had asked me, as in 
days of old, about my reading and writing, 
about my friends, about my travel, I should 
have chattered in an easy-going way and 
should have sent you my latest kodak pic- 
tures. But, as you asked about the great 
changes to come, the world-wide powers 
of reconstruction as they appear from 
the psychologist's viewpoint, the storm 
of the great time carries me away and 
I think less of the one to whom I 
write than of the many whom I should like 

110 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

to convince. But today I must go soberly to 
work; I want to speak of the new idealism, 
which surely will come to the belligerent 
lands and to the neutral ones, to Europe and 
to America; and the mere word idealism sug- 
gests the temptation to become enthusiastic 
and rhapsodic. But nowhere is there a 
greater danger of the eulogy missing its 
point. In praising idealism we too readily 
forget that there are many kinds of idealism 
in the world and that our ecstasy is meaning- 
less unless we define pretty carefully what 
type of idealism we have in mind. 

It always struck me as rather superficial 
that when authors begin to speculate about 
the changes in future civilization, their fancy 
regularly moves in the paths of physical sci- 
ence. They give us the super-telephone and 
the thirtieth-century airship, and they ignore 
the fact that the real changes in the history 
of civilization have not come so much from 
inventions as from new principles of life. 
The idea of brotherly love, the idea of the 
value of knowledge, the idea of the worthi- 
ness of labor, the idea of social justice, the 
idea of self-government, the idea of the abo- 
lition of slavery, and many other large and 

111 



TOMORROW 

small revolutions of the mind have created 
the real history of mankind. The French 
Revolution really changed the world. I be- 
lieve firmly that the war of today will change 
the world no less. But the change will again 
be an internal one ; a new idealistic faith will 
arise and will be victorious, whatever the vic- 
tories or defeats at the battlefront of the 
war-makers or at the round table of the dip- 
lomatic peacemakers may be. This faith will 
be one which has found its clearest, self-con- 
scious expression in German life, and in this 
sense, whatever the cannons may say, the 
war will end with the spiritual triumph of 
the German nation. 

You can imagine what a protest — no, what 
a storm of indignation such a creed would 
unchain, if I were to utter it in the empire 
of the American printing press. ' ' Those bar- 
barians may crush weak peoples by their 
brute force, but there is nothing spiritual in 
them which would win the day" — that is their 
slogan and will remain their comfort until 
some day that new faith wins in these print- 
ers' trenches too. But even you may easily 
misinterpret my prophecy ; you may class me 
among those whose German patriotism gives 

112 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

them a distorted perspective of the European 
nations. I know there is very little hate in 
Germany since the first outburst of patriotic 
passion has passed, but not a few think that 
they owe it to the loftiness of the German 
cause to depreciate the qualities of the hostile 
countries. Nothing is further from my mind. 
August, 1914, has not changed my admiration 
for the great history-making virtues of Eng- 
land, of France, of Italy, of Russia; and in 
not a few ways my respect for them has 
grown. Moreover, I sincerely expect and 
hope that in this social regeneration of the 
world Germany, too, will learn much from 
her rivals. In the relation both to foreign 
countries and to its colonies Germany will 
surely add many a virtue of its western 
neighbors to its inborn traits. But when the 
German idealism exerts its influence in other 
lands, it will be more than an additional touch 
or a mere imitative supplement; it will be 
truly the spread of a new principle which 
takes a firm hold of the inmost soul of the 
nations. 

I know you will read these lines with a 
skeptical smile because you as a historian do 
not believe much in the abstract general prin- 
113 



TOMORROW 

ciples by which the philosopher tries to ex- 
press the essence of a people. You prefer 
carefully to gather the thousand single fea- 
tures and actions which have been registered. 
They give an actual account of the real hap- 
penings, while all those vague formulae are 
merely superadded by the observer. I think, 
on the contrary, that if you understand the 
formula of an individual or of a nation, of 
a period or of a whole age, you grasp more 
than any catalogue of events can give you. 
It is the same difference as between a painted 
portrait of a man and a series of moving pic- 
tures taken of him. To be sure those photo- 
graphs on the film show every gesture and 
every expression: nothing is left out. And 
yet you know much more about the true per- 
sonality and character of the man if the brush 
of the painter has rendered it on the canvas. 
The painter gives one position only, but his 
intuition has grasped the one expression in 
which the man's whole individuality is held 
forever. 

What is the characteristic feature in the 
physiognomy of modern Germany? The 
usual answer is : Efficiency through organiza- 
tion. The Germans' talent and instinct for 

114 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

organization are held responsible for their 
successes before the war and in the war. I 
do not think that this hits the center of the 
target at all. Might we not even confess that 
this freely spent praise of the Germans' in- 
stinct for organization is to a certain degree 
unmerited 1 ? A misunderstanding is involved 
there. I find that Germans left to themselves 
have rather little talent and inclination to 
organize themselves for common action. 
Their mental habits at once lead into differ- 
ences of opinion; each one has his own plan. 
In case of an emergency among Germans 
there is a great chance that in spite of the 
best intentions much energy will be spent at 
cross-purposes and the organization will be 
at first clumsy. I have often observed that 
the Americans, for instance, in case of an ac- 
cident, have a much stronger and safer or- 
ganizing instinct. Such misplaced popular 
appreciation of mental traits in other nations 
is frequent. Almost every German visitor 
puts emphasis on the one great talent of the 
Americans, to make the most of their time. 
They are the most time-saving people. If 
he looked more deeply, he would discover 
that the American nation wastes nothing 
115 



TOMORROW 

more than time, as only a very rich nation 
can afford to do. 

If Germany's characteristic virtue were 
really nothing but organization, we surely 
could not speak of a great new principle and 
least of all could we bring it into connection 
with idealism. Organization is, after all, 
merely a technical method. The factory sys- 
tem shows it in a perfected form, and cer- 
tainly in England and not in Germany the 
team work of the mills was generated. But 
what is then the real moving energy behind 
that world of German organization, efficiency 
and "Kultur," to use a word which can with- 
stand the sneer of those who do not under- 
stand it? It seems to me not an ability and 
not a method, but a certain belief. I should 
say first: it is a belief in " absolute" values. 
I know you call such terms philosophic cant, 
but after all they point the way most quickly. 
Belief in absolute values means simply that 
the deed is valued independent from the 
pleasure it brings. Whatever is valuable 
only in so far as it yields pleasure to some- 
one is a relative value; but if we are filled 
with the belief that an action has value with- 
out any reference to pleasure or pain, then 
116 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

we credit it with absolute value. To be 
guided in life by such a belief is idealism. 
Most of our actions are controlled by our 
wish for pleasure or by our fear of pain; 
many men do not know any other motive at 
all for action. But whoever performs an act 
because its goal appears to him one of abso- 
lute value does an idealistic deed. If I try 
to make a discovery because I should have 
an advantage from it, it would be indifferent 
from the standpoint of idealism. If I per- 
form the same work because I believe in the 
absolute value of scientific truth, I am stirred 
by an idealistic motive. There may be no 
less glory in a realistic civilization, but surely 
the deepest energy of the German develop- 
ment has been the idealistic conviction. 

Yet this is only half of the story. Abso- 
lute value may be accredited to different 
aims. Truth may be such a value, but so 
may beauty or justice or progress or char- 
acter development or religion. Devotion to 
one by no means excludes devotion to others ; 
but the trends of various times or the char- 
acters of various peoples emphasize different 
values. A certain nation may have deep 
idealistic traits, but its idealism may be cen- 
117 



TOMORROW 

tered in the formation and growth of the in- 
dividual soul: its ideal is the value of the 
personality. The German faith is not of this 
individualistic type; it is fixed on those 
values which do not belong to this or that 
special individual, but which can be realized 
only in the community. The aims of the 
single person are then submerged in the aims 
of the whole embracing group. The true 
German is guided neither by the realistic 
hope for his pleasures and advantages nor 
by the idealistic belief in the development of 
his own soul, but by his feeling of duty to- 
ward the common aims and ideals. His life 
is a contribution to fulfillments which lie be- 
yond himself. 

Let me spin on this contemplation for some 
further letter pages so as to protect it 
against misunderstanding. The word ideal- 
ism is likely to suggest that only spiritual 
achievements like science and art, justice and 
statecraft are in view, and not material in- 
terests like commerce and industry. This 
is surely not the idea. The progress of eco- 
nomic life has in itself the full dignity of a 
real value. Whoever builds up an industrial 
plant only to gain his profit from it, stands 
118 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

outside of the idealistic sphere; but if he 
devotes himself to the task inspired by en- 
thusiastic interest in the technical advance 
of mankind, he serves a. true value and there- 
fore acts from an idealistic motive. 

But you will be more surprised when I 
add that the German idealism is by no means 
bound up with the state. I know this sounds 
iconoclastic. At home and abroad in every 
discussion it has been taken as an axiom: 
German Kultur is a function of the state. I 
think this puts the emphasis in the wrong 
place. The often heard claim that the state 
does not exist for the individuals but the in- 
dividuals for the state is perfectly correct 
from the standpoint of German idealism, but 
exactly the same is true of any other group 
which is held together by a united will and 
by aims and goals of its own. The city too is 
not for the citizens, but the citizens for the 
city. And even the factory is not for the 
workmen, but the workmen for the factory. 
This means that from the standpoint of the 
idealist the workman ought to look on the 
mill not as the mere source of wages for him 
and his fellow-workers, but as a wheel in the 
machinery of civilization, a wheel which he 
119 



TOMORROW 

helps to keep moving, because its motion is 
in itself a valuable end; then only does he 
serve an ideal purpose and his unselfish aim 
ennobles his humble work. 

But the real importance of this point lies 
in the fact that not only groups narrower 
than the state can bind the will of the per- 
sonality but also that groups wider than the 
state can and must secure the same effect. 
It is utterly wrong to think that German 
idealism must be indifferent to communities 
larger than the nation and that it can have 
no concern with international aims. Surely 
the superficial type of cosmopolitanism has 
no claim on idealistic respect. But as soon 
as groups of states are combined in an or- 
ganized unity by which a common will can 
be formed and expressed, they demand loy- 
alty like a single state. How could it be 
otherwise? The German idealism makes the 
Prussian live in the aims of Prussia and 
the Saxon in the aims of Saxony; but that 
does not exclude either from devoting him- 
self to the purposes of the whole German 
nation. If Germany and Austria were firmly 
organized into one internal unit with one 
definite aim, each citizen would subordinate 
120 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

his endeavor to the will of this state group ; 
and if the states of Europe or of the whole 
globe were united, the will of this widest 
organization would become efficient by be- 
coming the will of every single member. The 
essential condition is not the national state 
but the stability of the organization by which 
the combined individuals may become clearly 
conscious of their unified will. Hence Ger- 
man Kultur-idealism is unfairly denounced 
when it is blamed for a narrow adoration of 
the state by which the interests of the other 
states are neglected in an egotistic way. On 
the contrary, the devotion to the state by no 
means excludes the most faithful devotion 
to the will of mankind, as soon as it is inter- 
nationally organized. 

Of course, it is not by chance that the 
idealistic idea stuck first of all to the state, 
as its members are naturally and from the 
start controlled by uniform thoughts and 
emotions; their common past and future 
bind them together, and a community will 
is generated in which each individual rec- 
ognizes his own highest longing. Moreover 
Germany, or especially the Prussian state, 
was more than others predestined to develop 
121 



TOMORROW 

this idealistic creed in connection with the 
state. At the time when the principles of 
idealism had been proclaimed by Kant and 
Fichte, the citizens of Prussia were welded 
together with iron firmness by the Napole- 
onic pressure. Yet the resulting unity of 
feeling would have been inefficient if Prus- 
sian history had not created a remarkable 
tradition of a faithful civil service. A well- 
trained bureaucratic staff was the essential 
condition for a true fulfillment of the or- 
ganized will of the state. For a century the 
preparedness of this civil service organiza- 
tion has grown steadily; and no smaller and 
no larger group than the German state can 
offer to the German a form of organization 
which has comparable firmness or which 
can provide for similar means of efficient far- 
sighted preparation and adjusted action. 
The state has therefore remained central in 
his idealistic ideas of organized efficiency. 
But the idealistic principle itself is as much 
meant for the widest group as for the small- 
est, for the family as well as for the concert 
of the nations of the world, as soon as it 
really is a concert. 

This idealistic principle, which has given 
122 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

meaning to the striving and the strife of 
Germany, this faith in the absolute value of 
group achievements will spread over the 
world together with the principle of nation- 
alism. The other nations, while in the most 
terrific struggle the world has seen, have 
at the same time grasped, tried and wel- 
comed the life idea of their enemies. From 
the battlefields it spread over all the lands, 
and from the belligerent to the neutral coun- 
tries; the belief in the new idealism will be 
the central idea of the globe after the war. 
At the threshold of the century Mr. Stead 
wrote a brilliant book which he rightly called 
"The Americanization of the World." In 
this sense the war, whatever the future map 
may tell, will truly end with the Gernianiza- 
tion of the world. It is a Germanization in 
which every true German will rejoice more 
than in any world dominion by conquest, 
which is a low un-German idea imputed to the 
nation only by those who have no inkling of 
the German ideals. This new idealism will 
be as powerful a molding energy in the world 
as were the ideals which the French Revo- 
lution made predominant. 
The conversion came because the war with 
123 



TOMORROW 

its supreme demands suddenly stopped all 
the leisurely dilettantism, all the go-as-you- 
please methods which are so comfortable for 
those who use them and so winning for those 
who look on, but which are ultimately so in- 
efficient. Men of all countries felt that, as 
Mr. Hearst said, " aside from the mili- 
tarism the Germans have made the most im- 
portant contributions of all the European 
peoples to Christian civilization during the 
last forty years. They have led the world 
in scientific achievements; they have led the 
world in their cooperative effort toward ef- 
ficiency; they have led the world in the 
amelioration of the condition of the working 
men and the poor; they have led the world 
in the development of the best use of the 
soil ; they have led the world in the develop- 
ment of universal education as the basis of 
national strength, service and happiness. 
Their commercial and industrial develop- 
ment has been greater in the last forty years 
than that of any other people on earth." 
Yet those who studied it felt at the same time 
that no external scheme, no mechanical ad- 
ministration, but true idealism had secured 
these marvels. The Reverend L. M. Powers, 
124 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

returning here from the European battle- 
fields, writes about Germany: "The indi- 
vidual is as nothing, the nation everything. 
This, it seems to me, is what above all things 
makes Germany strong. There is a spiritual 
unity and elevation and strength here not 
to be found elsewhere. If I felt that Ger- 
many's success was due merely to her big 
guns, her military training, her foresight in 
planning and preparing for war, I should 
hate Germany as badly as her worst enemy 
hates her. From mere force nothing good 
can come. It is my firm conviction that Ger- 
many is greater in peace than in war and 
that the foundation of her greatness, as is 
the foundation of every people that is really 
great, is • spiritual power. ' ' The problems 
which have tortured and torn other peoples 
have been harmoniously solved in socialized 
Germany. 

The contrast of the German nation with 
the other great countries of Europe was so 
strong that even such Americans as later be- 
came entirely victims of the passionate pro- 
British agitation were deeply impressed by 
it, until the war broke out. Even a man like 
Owen Wister, who is today surpassed by few 
125 



TOMORROW 

in unfairness to Germany, wrote this about 
his impressions a few weeks before the war : 
"Nothing can efface my impression of Ger- 
many — the fair aspect and order of the coun- 
try and of the cities, the well-being of the 
people, their contented faces, their grave 
adequacy, their kindliness and, crowning all 
material prosperity, the feeling for beauty 
as shown by their gardens and, better and 
more important still, the reverend value for 
their great native poets and musicians. Such 
was the splendor of this empire as it 
unrolled before me through May and June 
of 1914 that by contrast the state of its two 
great neighbors, France and England, 
seemed distressing and unenviable. Paris 
was shabby and incoherent, London full of 
unrest. Instead of Germany's order confu- 
sion prevailed in England; and in both 
France and England incompetency was the 
chief note. The French face was too often a 
face of worried sadness or revolt ; men spoke 
of political scandals and dissensions, petty 
and unpatriotic in spirit, and a political trial 
revealing depths of every sort of baseness 
and dishonor filled the newspapers ; while in 
England, besides discord of suffrage and dis- 
126 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

cord of labor, civil war seemed so imminent 
that no one would have been surprised to hear 
of it any day. So that I thought : Suppose a 
soul arrived on earth from another world 
without any mortal ties whatever were given 
its choice, after a survey of the nations, 
which it should be born in and belong to. 
In May, June and July, 1914, my choice 
would have been not France, not England, 
not America, but Germany." 

It is a leading American who has crystal- 
lized here in these few sentences the essence 
of Europe. It is part of the pentecost of 
calamity which overcame public opinion in 
America that even a man like Owen Wister 
can sincerely believe that all this was true 
before the first of August and the opposite 
true after the first of August. The sociol- 
ogist must ignore the distorted picture which 
his passion designed, but can trust the more 
his record of better days. It sketches what 
every observer felt. England, France and 
Italy were losing cultural ground and Ger- 
many was advancing. Every city, every 
street, every face told the story; and slowly 
it dawned on all Europe that the German 
spirit of subordination and sacrifice to the 
127 



TOMORROW 

will of the organized group, that is German 
idealism, was responsible for the daily in- 
creasing distance. The first year of the war 
quickly made that which the wisdom of the 
few had recognized patent to everybody. 
Past were the days of individualism with 
their disregard of the expert, with their belief 
in free rivalry which merely opens the way to 
selfishness, with the indulgence in enjoyable 
privileges where stern duty is calling, with 
their trust in humanistic sympathy where 
firm organization ought to eradicate the 
source of suffering. The two years of allied 
warfare behind the front have been two 
years of forcing Kultur- efficiency of the Ger- 
man type on millions upon millions who had 
not known it and instinctively disliked it. 

H. G. Wells, whose epithets are boldly di- 
rected against Germany, but whose argu- 
ments fight strenuously for German ideals, 
characterizes the contrasts well in his last 
volume "What is Coming?": "For every- 
one there are two diametrically different 
ways of thinking about life; there is indi- 
vidualism, the way that comes as naturally 
as the grunt from a pig, thinking outwardly 
from one's self as the centre of the universe, 
128 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

and there is the way of thought every re- 
ligion is trying in some form to teach, think- 
ing back to one's self from greater standards 
and realities." "Germany will, I think, be 
so far defeated in the contest of endurance 
which is now in progress that she will have 
to give up every scrap of territorial advan- 
tage she has gained ; she may lose most of her 
colonial empire — but she will have at least 
the satisfaction of producing far profounder 
changes in the chief of her antagonists than 
those she herself will undergo." "So we 
pass from the fact that individualism is 
hopeless muddle to the fact that the indi- 
vidualist idea is one of limitless venality. 
Who can buy may control. The western na- 
tions have taken a peculiar pride in having 
a free Press, that is a Press that may be 
bought by anyone. " " The breakdown of in- 
dividualism has been so complete in Great 
Britain that we are confronted with the spec- 
tacle of this great and ancient kingdom re- 
constructing itself perforce while it wages 
the greatest war in history." 

There is no doubt that older spirit was 
more likable. That is the reason why the 
German nation of the last two decades has 
129 



TOMORROW 

never been liked as much as others among 
its neighbors. That jolly-good-fellow spirit 
flourishes most in a leisurely atmosphere 
where everybody lets himself go and hap- 
hazard moods abound. Wherever rigid rules 
prevail and everybody is tense for the signal 
call of duty, a certain stiffness and formality 
can hardly be suppressed. Relaxation is de- 
lightful, but supreme achievement demands 
tension. The tension of the spirit has come 
over Europe. Organization for cooperative 
efficiency has become the appeal of the hour. 
The hated word compulsion sounded through 
the unaccustomed world and threatened the 
individualists, until they began to understand 
that German idealism does not rely upon 
compulsion but on obligation. Not fear but 
belief and feeling of duty bound free men 
in the industrial, technical, cultural and mili- 
tary service. In every workshop the rhythm 
of the hammer beat grew faster; scientific 
theory and practical labor were yoked more 
firmly than ever before. The disorganized 
actions of the seven allied nations, which 
had led to Antwerp and Warsaw, to Gal- 
lipoli and Kut-el-Amara, were replaced by 
a steadfast organization with united will. 
130 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

Europe learned discipline; and for the next 
generation Europe will not unlearn it and 
will not give up the spirit of sacrifice and 
subordination. Peace will come and those 
to whom life meant their personal pleasure 
and success will feel hereafter that life is not 
worth living if it is not fundamentally ser- 
vice. 

What will be removed, what will be re- 
placed by the idealistic striving of the new 
time? The opposing force which will be 
prostrated first of all is the spirit of selfish 
enjoyment. Man's nature is a network of 
desires: the wish to satisfy them needs no 
encouragement and no training. The fulfill- 
ment of these wishes is neither good nor bad, 
as long as it does not interfere with greater 
interests. But the more selfish desires grow, 
the greater are the chances that other de- 
mands of the soul, will-impulses toward last- 
ing values, will be hindered and choked by 
them. Material civilization, technical ad- 
vance and general prosperity naturally feed 
the desires and make them grow rankly. The 
last half century with its unparalleled in- 
dustrial expansion multiplied the desires and 
created in response to them a luxury and 
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TOMORROW 

ostentatiousness and feeding of the senses 
such as the world had not seen since the days 
of decaying Rome. Do not think for a mo- 
ment that I exempt the Germany of the ante- 
war days from this accusation. I think when 
I saw you last in Berlin I spoke to you about 
the alarm which I felt at the thousand signs 
of unsound epicurism and self-gratification. 
Rococo traits had pervaded Germany as well 
as the rest of Europe. Yet I knew that a 
stern idealism was growing in Germany still 
faster than the voluptuousness of modern 
life and would win the day in a crisis. The 
crisis came, and hereafter the frivolity of 
life will be silent on every road of Europe 
on which soldiers have marched. 

The carnival was too gay; and yet the 
day to come will not be clouded by an Ash 
Wednesday mood. Of course, human nature 
remains human nature, and there will be self- 
ishness and vanity and sensuality and lazi- 
ness in the world at every time and in every 
nation. It has always been so and will re- 
main so. But the great swing and the over- 
whelming trend have often changed in the his- 
tory of mankind ; and they are changing now 
from the craving for pleasure to the readi- 

132 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

ness for duty. The life of devotion is not 
less abundant, and surely it ought never to 
be devoid of beauty. The puritanic error 
was always to believe that the joy in beauty 
is a selfish pleasure. The new idealism will 
not be tainted by such an esthetic sin. True 
beauty is as much an ideal value as truth and 
morality and religion. He has not under- 
stood the meaning of art who compares it 
with the mere selfish pleasure of gratifying 
the personal desires. Esthetic joy is over- 
personal and the future, filled with idealistic 
belief, will uproot the shallow luxury of our 
time, but will surely never fail to intertwine 
the gifts of beauty with the achievements of 
the will toward duty. 

Nor does this turn toward the life of sacri- 
fice over-emphasize the bodily aspect which 
the war to a certain degree suggests. There 
physical courage seems the paramount duty. 
Yet in spite of skeptical prophecies, the 
psychologist can never have doubted that the 
instinct for physical bravery, born from the 
natural aggressiveness of man, would die out 
last. The war has proved this. There is far 
too much lack of mental and moral courage, 
but in every nation the mere physical cour- 
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TOMORROW 

age abounded in the suggestive surround- 
ings ; and as everyone has it, it will be some- 
what discounted after this universal test. 
Loyalty to ideals, loyalty to the will of the 
group, loyalty which effaces all selfish de- 
sires, will be the vehicle of the future until 
the great-grandchildren of the trench fighters 
of today may see the pendulum again swing 
in the opposite direction. 

If duty for its own sake and not pleasure 
or work for future pleasure's sake becomes 
the signature of the time, not only selfishness 
will be vanquished but many altruistic and 
humanistic offerings will disappear. On the 
surface the opposite might be expected. Is 
not sympathy with suffering fully in the 
spirit of an idealistic age? Is it not a goal 
worthy of the noblest community will to 
spread pleasure among fellowmen? Yes and 
no. In so far as altruistic emotion and gen- 
erosity are elements of personal character 
development, of man's inner training and 
self-development, they have indeed distinctly 
an idealistic value; but the goal is then a 
strictly individual growth of one's own per- 
sonality. But as far as the intended effect 
of spreading pleasure is concerned, the ideal- 
134 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

ist would look on it with indifference. From 
his standpoint mere pleasure as such does 
not belong to the values. The millionfold 
pleasure is therefore just as indifferent as 
his own or his neighbor's pleasure. Life is 
not made more valuable by multiplying the 
sources of comfort, but by making it better 
and richer in service. Hence the mere emo- 
tion of sympathy in this light appears more 
like thoughtless sentimentality; and it must 
be repressed by a conscious effort to improve 
social conditions, not to disseminate pleasure, 
but to make the life of the community 
worthier and to put it on a higher plane. 
Benefactions and charities then appear 
symptoms of a poorly organized social age; 
and they must be repressed by less ego- 
centric efforts to build up a community in 
which everybody has a chance for fullest self- 
development and amplest service to the eter- 
nal values. 

But the hardest struggle which the new 
idealism will have to pass through will not 
be with selfishness or with sentimentality but 
with individualistic idealism, because the new 
idealism is clearly not individualistic. 
Surely it is a praiseworthy life which is de- 
135 



TOMORROW 

voted to purposes of self -improvement and 
self -development, but the time for which we 
hope is tuned to higher ideas. Above all, the 
social idealism leaves ample room for loyalty 
to individualistic values. We can serve the 
organized group, the organized state, the or- 
ganized body of mankind ; and yet can, nay, 
ought to aim toward the highest perfection 
of our own soul. But a life which is con- 
trolled merely by faith in individual values 
is hardly touched by the over-personal will. 
To the convinced individualist every over- 
personal demand appears a fantastic, vague, 
intangible illusion. To him the state is never 
anything but a combination of individuals. 
Truth, beauty, morality, have meaning for 
him only as help and satisfaction to indi- 
viduals. He does not grasp that their truest 
value is annihilated when they are used sim- 
ply to satisfy individuals. Individualistic 
idealism, of course, stands high above mere 
selfishness, and there have been ages in which 
the greatest service to mankind came through 
its agency, and such ages may come again. 
But individualism is unfit for the greatest 
achievement of the group. Its rivalry can 
never secure what organized order can ac- 
136 



THE NEW IDEALISM 

complish. Where individualism prevails, 
subordination is unwelcome ; and that means 
that dilettantism flourishes and the expert is 
powerless. The dilettant is now ruled out 
and the triumph of the expert secured all 
over the world for the days to come ; organi- 
zation replaces haphazard performance; the 
self-conscious will of the group suppresses 
the individual whim. To have attained this is 
the most important victory of the German 
nation. If the war brought nothing else this 
alone may make us feel that those who died 
on both sides did not give their lives in vain. 
And they died for America too; the new 
idealism has come to the new world and is 
wrestling with the spirit of yesterday. The 
next steamer may bring you a full report 
about this new American idealism. 

Faithfully yours, 
H.M. 



VI 

IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

My dear Friend: 

If I remember rightly, the closing words 
of my last letter spoke about the new Amer- 
ican idealism which has grown up. At pres- 
ent those sheets are still in mid-ocean. But 
when this letter of today reaches you, the last 
one will have been in your hands for a week. 
I can well imagine what will have happened 
in that interval. Whenever a good friend 
sits down in your study and you begin to talk 
about the war, you will take my letter from 
the file on your desk and say: "I must read 
to you the end of a letter which I just re- 
ceived — it is the best joke I have read for 
a long while — 'American idealism'!" — and 
then he will chuckle with you — and you will 
outdo each other in deriding America's self- 
ishness. He will say that the Americans 
alone prolonged the war when the cause of 
138 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

the Allies began to collapse and secured the 
further maiming and killing of hundreds of 
thousands in order to gain billions from the 
ammunition sale. And you will add that they 
submitted to every humiliating British viola- 
tion of their American rights in order to 
profit from war loans. He will go on — Oh, 
the list is long! And you both will repeat 
again and again with contempt the words 
which strike you so humorously: "American 
idealism!" And yet, my friend, I beg you 
to read patiently this second installment of 
my optimistic report. It would not be worth 
while for you and me to exchange letters in 
such a serious style, if we did not try to look 
deeper than the man on the street. Where 
does he stand! The German simply sticks 
to his story of the billion sale of American 
shells to the Allies, while none went to the 
Germans, and of the American silent help in 
the effort to starve the German women and 
children. The American repeats his tale of 
German barbarism and treacherous atroci- 
ties. Both are sure that the other nation 
has acted contrary to the laws of humanity 
and that no true idealism can be in the soul 
of the other people. But is such smoking-car 
139 



TOMORROW 

wisdom and stump-speech rhetoric really a 
text for you and me? Let us shake off the 
delusions and above all let us look to the es- 
sentials which alone make history, and you 
will no longer smile if I tell you with earn- 
est conviction: Yes, the Americans of today 
are truly idealists. 

But I add at once: They did not become 
idealists today or yesterday. The nation 
was born and grew up under the star of 
idealism and nobody ever understood the 
working of the American mind who did not 
recognize in it the element of idealistic faith. 
I remember well what a revelation it was for 
me when I arrived on these shores for the 
first time. I was filled with the prejudices 
with which every European of the educated 
classes is stuffed: The Americans are ma- 
terialists and dollar hunting is their only 
pastime. It is the usual calamity; nations 
do not know one another and judge from 
outer symptoms which they interpret by mo- 
tives of their own invention. When I tried 
to grasp the real energies of the life which 
surged around me, I saw that the political 
life of the Americans was guided by an 
intense spirit of self-direction. Indeed, who- 

140 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

ever wishes to understand the baffling tur- 
moil, the inner mechanism behind all the po- 
litical forces, must set out from this point. 
In his private life the American is very ready- 
to conform to the will of another, but in the 
sphere of public life the individual feels that 
he must guide his activities to the last detail, 
if they are to have any significance whatever 
to him. He will allow no outside motive to 
be substituted, not even the recognition that 
a material advantage would accrue or that 
some desirable end would be more readily 
achieved if the control and responsibility 
were to be vested in someone else. But this 
is exactly the criterion of idealism; the deed 
is performed not because the end brings ad- 
vantage, but because the principle of the act 
is valuable in itself. 

Self-direction appears to the American an 
ideal value in which he trusts. But the eco- 
nomic world shows the same grouping 
around one center. Just as the political life 
of America can be traced back to the instinct 
for self-direction, so it can be found that it 
is the instinct for free self -initiative which 
has set in motion the tremendous economic 
flywheel. The desire to be up and doing has 
141 



TOMORROW 

opened the new world, has tilled the fields, 
created industries and developed the material 
resources until the nation has become an eco- 
nomic world power. Not the greed for gold 
but the belief in the value of productive ef- 
fort in itself is the soul of this commerce and 
industry; the money is longed for as the 
proof of the successful effort. The social 
character of American life is no less con- 
trolled by one underlying trait : the spirit of 
self-assertion. Here is the root of the new 
world equality: an ideal belief in equal dig- 
nity and worth in spite of all outer differ- 
ences controls the social relations from man 
to man. This spirit educates to politeness, 
helpfulness and fairness. Finally the intel- 
lectual life is molded by the spirit of self- 
perfection. The old puritanic belief that ex- 
istence finds its meaning only in ethical en- 
deavor and that self-perfection is the great 
duty which takes precedence of all others re- 
mains the informing energy of the nation. 
From New England, which for more than 
two centuries kept the cultural leadership, it 
spread over all the land and worked for edu- 
cation and moral purity. Hence in every one 
of the four great spheres of national life, the 

142 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

political, the economic, the social and the cul- 
tural, a strong idealistic faith is the determin- 
ing power, a belief in something which is 
valuable in itself without regard to the pleas- 
ure which it furnishes. This is not an after- 
thought of today. I have my evidence in 
print. At the threshold of the century I 
wrote two large volumes, "The Americans," 
grouping my material around these four 
idealistic tendencies. 

But this is clear : If these four traits make 
up American idealism, it is throughout self- 
centered and individualistic. The ultimate 
value lies in the personal soul, not in the 
creation of independent values. The indi- 
vidual with his rights, his efforts and his 
purity is all; the ideal state, the ideal com- 
munity, the growth of art, science and na- 
tional efficiency as such are unimportant 
compared with the growth of the individual 
personalities. But while all this was prob- 
ably the correct interpretation of American 
life at the opening of the century, new ener- 
gies began to be felt soon afterward. When 
shortly before the war my publishers re- 
printed "The Americans" in a popular edi- 
tion, I wrote in the preface as follows: 

143 



TOMORROW 

"Some years have passed since the book 
started on its pilgrimage. It was a time 
when the suffragists and the automobiles and 
the socialists and the cabarets and the law- 
abiding trusts were still rare, and the Pacific 
was separated by land from the Atlantic and 
the sexual problem separated by decency 
from the public discussion. The changes 
have broken in rapidly. New physical and 
new moral canals have been built. The poli- 
ticians have rushed into Progressivism and 
out of it ; the newspapers into anti-Japanism 
and out of it; the lawyers into Shermanism 
and out of it; the educators into electivism 
and out of it; the magazines into muckrak- 
ing and out of it. Indeed with us too much 
of the excitement of the noon fades before 
sunset ; and yet nobody can doubt that really 
great changes have come over the American 
nation in its political, its economic, its in- 
tellectual, its cultural and its social behavior. 
The position of capital has gone through dis- 
tinct development. Wealth has surely not 
decreased, but the belief in the privileges of 
wealth and in its leadership has been shaken. 
The social conscience has been awakened and 
a certain socialistic feeling has penetrated 
144 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

the whole community. Democracy has 
sought to emphasize its consequences. The 
old-fashioned faith in the system of checks 
and balances to the influence of the masses 
has lost its hold. The high tariff had to be 
lowered, the high income had to be tapped 
and the high legislators had to be brought 
down. The workingman has learned his 
strength and the merger-man his weakness. 
At the same time puritanism, from which 
the most characteristic elements of Ameri- 
can civilization had grown up, receded with 
unexpected suddenness. The new wealth and 
the new freedom, the rapid expansion of 
technical comfort, the gigantic immigration 
from southern and eastern Europe with its 
warmer sensuality, all worked together to 
bring us an America of excessive worldliness, 
an America which craves for amusement at 
any price. The kino, the auto and the tango 
are symbols of the day. But in spite of all 
the feministic foam and the libertinistic pose, 
the anti-puritanic period has brought a true 
arising of deeper esthetic values. A desire 
for beauty and harmony fills our life more 
than ever before. The drama has come to 
its own. And above all, while the old leader- 
145 



TOMORROW 

ship of wealth and of puritanic restraint is 
disappearing, a new cultural leadership is 
slowly developing its strength. The nation 
feels instinctively that whatever clamor pol- 
itics may make, the inner civilization cannot 
rely on the censorship of the masses, which 
follow any fashion and hysteric outcry. We 
cannot have a cultural referendum and a 
spiritual recall. The longing for the true 
scholarly expert and for the most highly edu- 
cated leader has become definite. The vulgar 
disrespect for pure intellectual work has 
ceased and the nation has begun to discrimi- 
nate between those who do not make money 
because they have not the power to do so 
and those who do not make money because 
they have more important things to do. 
Through all this America moves more and 
more into the same groove in which Euro- 
pean culture is moving forward.' ' 

This was written in the beginning of the 
momentous year 1914. Then came the war, 
and the movement away from individualism 
grew rapidly. Over-personal idealism has 
today taken such strong hold of the nation 
that not much prophetic art but merely some 
psychology is needed to foresee that the 
146 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

much derided German Kultur will be the 
American ideal of tomorow. One fact il- 
lumines the national situation. The Progres- 
sive party has ceased to exist. Did it disap- 
pear because its tendencies were unwelcome 
to the people ? Certainly not. It had to give 
up because it had become superfluous ; and it 
was superfluous because the two leading tra- 
ditional parties have practically accepted the 
Progressive program. In other words, not 
a group but the whole nation has now fol- 
lowed the Progressive lead; and American 
Progressivism is fundamentally the over- 
personal idealism which has built up mod- 
ern Germany. The New York World and 
other papers wanted to denounce the Koose- 
velt movement when they angrily called it 
an adaptation of German ideas to American 
life; but whether it is observed in scorn or 
in sympathy, surely the affinity cannot be 
overlooked. The social economic problems, 
however, bring this German element to still 
sharper relief than the strictly political ones. 
The most powerful preacher of the new 
Americanism knows quite well that he really 
teaches Germanism. Hence I do not feel up- 
set by the mockery of your letter in which 
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TOMORROW 

you comment on my sympathy with Roose- 
velt, the Deutschenfresser. I discriminate 
between the infuriated tirades for effect in 
inner politics, phrases sterile in the real 
world of affairs, and well considered expres- 
sions of matured conviction. The true 
Roosevelt has this to say, even in December, 
1915 : i ' Germany has been far in advance of 
us in securing industrial assurance, old age 
pensions and homes, and reasonably fair di- 
vision of profits between employer and em- 
ployed, and the like. But she has also been 
far ahead of us in requiring from the man 
who toils with his hands just as much as 
from the man who employs him loyalty to 
the nation. . . . There is absolute need of a 
larger nationalism if we are to make this 
country as efficient as Germany is efficient, 
and if at the same time we are to secure 
justice for our people. Germany has out- 
distanced us in our industrial efficiency. . . . 
Germany has taken care of her working 
classes at the same time that she has taken 
care of her business interests. Her pro- 
gram has been constructive and not de- 
structive. . . . Men who do not understand 
how Germany 's industrial system has worked 
148 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

speak as if it were all done only by super- 
vision and interference on the part of the 
government and in consequence by the de- 
struction of all individual initiative. This is 
not the fact. Unlimited private competition 
in business may result in the elimination of 
private initiative just exactly as under a sys- 
tem of private competition in politics unreg- 
ulated by law the usual result is a despot 
with all the power and nobody else with any 
power. The countries that are free politi- 
cally are the countries in which the political 
activity of the individual is regulated. The 
same is true industrially. In Germany the 
government does not interfere in the private 
affairs of a business except where it abso- 
lutely must ; but it makes the men responsible 
for managing that business take hold in con- 
junction with their employees and in con- 
junction with the government authorities to 
see that justice is done." The nation-wide 
movement for military preparedness is only 
another expression of this progressive spirit. 
All moves toward the same end: not the 
single individuals and their pleasure and not 
even their idealistic purity and self-develop- 
ment and self-initiative is the highest goal, 

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TOMORROW 

but the group, the community, the state, and 
their over-personal honor and justice and 
cultural growth. 

It is not surprising that the reaction has 
set in, as the full consequences of the old 
individualism became more and more danger- 
ous. In the easy times of a simpler past the 
shortcomings of American individualism 
were little felt because the resources of the 
land were hardly tapped and international 
competition was entirely in the background. 
Today the country stands in the midst of po- 
litical and economic and cultural world riv- 
alry, and its own internal life conditions 
have grown more difficult. It can no longer 
afford the luxury of individualism; it has to 
pay too dearly for it. The social mistakes 
and deficiencies of the country result first of 
all from the high-strung individualism of the 
nation with its disregard for the independent 
will of the embracing group and with its an- 
tipathy to personal subordination. Indeed 
it is not a question of the shortcomings which 
result from ill-will and criminal intent. Anti- 
social defectives are born in every country. 
The point is rather that the nation has suf- 
fered too much from the defects of its vir- 
150 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

tues, from the wrongs which come through 
its accredited principles. 

One fundamental fault of the individualist 
has been especially influential. He follows 
the path of his personal interest, of his lik- 
ing, of his instinct. The result is that he 
not only abhors compulsion for himself, but 
objects to the idea of disciplinary force for 
others. Hence he believes in education which 
is adjusted to the liking of the child. Only 
the material which attracts the involuntary 
attention of the boy and girl is fit for their 
instruction. But the youth of the country 
educated after this pattern may learn a thou- 
sand things, but never learn to learn. The 
children, coddled by the mere appeal of liking, 
spoiled by methods of free election, enter 
life without any power to control their at- 
tention and to bind their will. They know 
only the paths of least resistance ; they never 
have benefited from a training which teaches 
them to perform unwelcome duty. Their 
minds are naturally swayed by everything 
which tempts their attention by its loudness 
and glare. They are adjusted to the sensa- 
tions of the hour and to the headlines of the 
minute. They lack resistance to the super- 
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TOMORROW 

ficial glamour and still more the power to 
uphold persistently anything which does not 
strike their individual liking. 

It is only another form of their lack of 
discipline when such an individualistic com- 
munity ignores the expert. Everyone is his 
own master, everyone feels himself com- 
petent for every place, everyone has a right 
to offer to everyone his advice. A public 
life built up on expert advice must demand 
from everyone constant subordination. It 
is only a counterpart of the lack of respect 
for the trained specialist if the youth shows 
lack of respect for the public authorities. 
The effect of individualistic arbitrariness is 
felt no less in economic life. It must lead to 
the waste of public resources, to a ruthless 
destruction of the national treasures for pri- 
vate gain and exhaustion of the soil and of 
the forests, everyone reaping for himself 
without regard for the country as a whole 
and for the generations to come. But not 
only is the conservation of national resources 
neglected; the human resources are wasted 
with the same heedlessness. Life becomes 
unsafe, accidents abound, the whole technique 
of the national activities becomes unreliable. 
15% 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

The public conscience and the feeling of re- 
sponsibility for the public welfare remains 
rudimentary where individualism narrows 
the horizon. Corruption in city politics, lob- 
byism in the halls of the legislators, pork 
barrel statecraft, a spirit of trifling with 
momentous public interests, sap the national 
life. Where all this goes on, the power and 
strength and efficiency of a nation must 
finally suffer, however high the average of 
personal purity may be ; and that this is the 
case has forcefully come to the consciousness 
of the American people. 

The cry for the conservation of the na- 
tional resources, for the protection of the 
forests and mines and rivers, has awakened 
the public conscience. Movements for voca- 
tional guidance and vocational education 
have spread over the land. The muckraking 
propaganda has helped to uproot number- 
less misuses which grew from the debauch 
of individualism. Socialistic tendencies have 
crept into every statehouse; the central 
power of the federal government has been 
reenforced against the peripheral energies 
of the states with their provincial indi- 
vidualism. The scientific expert is more and 
15,3 



TOMORROW 

more often called into the service of public 
affairs. The creative and esthetic ambition 
of the nation has been stimulated as never 
before, and the new bugle call for military 
preparedness stirs up the comfortable indi- 
vidualism of the last half century. This is 
clear: preparedness cannot begin in Platts- 
burg camps ; preparedness must begin in the 
nursery. Without discipline in the home and 
in the early school days armies cannot be 
victorious in the modern battle of nations, 
and at the first test the aeroplanes would not 
fly and the submarines would not come up 
from the bottom. The whole country has 
now learned this great lesson : loyalty to the 
state as such, loyalty to the over-personal 
will, is the supreme demand to which every 
individualistic creed must become adjusted. 
Over-personal idealism does not suppress the 
individualistic idealism of the past, but 
makes it serviceable to a higher good. Every 
newspaper page of today bears witness to 
this reorganization throughout the land. 

May I confess to you, my friend, that I 

watch this tremendous change with a queer 

mixture of feelings ? The changes which have 

set in are exactly those for which I have 

154 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

pleaded ever since I came to America. My 
first little volume of marginal notes to 
American education and politics, social life 
and scholarship, which I sent out into the 
world under the title "American Traits" 
was such a psychological warning against the 
dangers of exaggerated individualism from 
the standpoint of a German idealist. You 
know I did not forget to tell Germans how 
much they might learn from American in- 
dividualistic virtues; but I felt sure that 
the American disregard for non-individual 
values must lead to disaster, and as I be- 
lieved that a new spirit must begin with the 
education of the youth, I felt that I should 
not fulfill my duty if I did not interpret my 
task as educator widely enough to include a 
frank expression of my German-made con- 
victions. Hence I ought to be delighted with 
the change which has come to the nation. It 
lies directly in the line of my hopes ; and yet 
I cannot deny that I feel this change as a 
loss, as just that America dwindles away 
which fascinated me by its difference from 
the old world tendencies to which I was ac- 
customed. There is an undeniable charm 
and comfort and joyfulness in a national life 
155 



TOMORROW 

which is swayed by individualism and when 
I came under its spell I loved it as millions 
of immigrants have loved it before. I felt 
that it was unsound and unfit for the days of 
growing international complexity and of in- 
creasing demands for social justice and civic 
reorganization, but I felt it as attractive 
and bewitching. The lack of discipline makes 
life so easy. The optimism and the good- 
fellowship remove all the resistance which 
so often makes continental life difficult. 
There is a certain rigid harshness in every 
community in which children have learned 
obedience and in which men have never for- 
gotten it. 

When even the outsider feels the loss of 
the old unfettered community life with such 
regret, it is only natural that many who were 
born into it deplore the coming of the new 
time. Some are simply afraid that inner 
discipline and subordination to the authori- 
ties means aggressive militarism — the Prus- 
sianism of the cheap caricature. They are 
not aware that the individual German has 
surely no less freedom in the higher sense of 
the word than the American. Of mere 
license there is less for him, but the oppor- 
156 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

tunity to develop himself in accordance with 
his own desires and ideals is in many ways 
greater for the German than for the Amer- 
ican, as he is less chained by fashion and 
public prejudices. The Germans differ from 
one another much more than the Americans ; 
and this is true of their opinions and inter- 
ests, of their tastes and enjoyments, as well 
as of their hats and collars. Their unwill- 
ingness to be classed in two great political 
parties seems to me typical. The German 
would feel his freedom impaired if he had 
to decide between only two patterns of po- 
litical thought, which means in too many 
American elections the choice between two 
evils. The free German demands a whole 
scale of parties with all the half-tones be- 
tween. 

Others try to put on the brakes because 
they are afraid that the new idealism, for 
which they prefer quite different names, 
might destroy much of the work of their 
fathers. They see with increasing alarm the 
widespread tendency to render easier the 
changes in the constitution ; the conservative 
system which the founders of the republic 
created and which has given protection to 
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TOMORROW 

many an undeserved privilege seems to them 
in danger of being overridden by radical 
legislation. No doubt, such a progressive 
tendency exists; it is the natural condition 
for a true organization of the national will, 
which hardly came to its own as long as all 
was left to individualistic rivalry. The 
fathers of the country were satisfied with 
equal laws for all, but in the new time it has 
been discovered that the mere impartiality of 
laws is entirely insufficient for the social 
justice which the new idealism proclaims. 
Not only equal laws are needed, but laws 
which aim toward a certain equalization. 
Wealth is not a product of individuals but 
of the community; the will of the equalizing 
community, and not the mere enterprise and 
the unbridled strength of the individuals, 
must be authoritative for the distribution of 
this community product. These ideas, which 
have become a matter of course for the new 
Germany with its social legislation, are ad- 
vancing rapidly in America and the spirit 
of the past is indeed threatened by them. 
Warning voices are raised against this un- 
deniable crisis in constitutionalism. 

Even a national association for constitu- 
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IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

tional government has been founded to save 
whatever can still be saved. David Jayne 
Hill is its spokesman. At the time when he 
was ambassador to Germany and I served as 
exchange professor in Berlin, you met him 
at my dinner table, and you remember the 
beautiful speech he made that night about 
the German ideals of social justice. He un- 
derstood them perfectly and appreciated 
them on the German background, but since 
they have taken hold of the American re- 
public he fears the defeat of the old Ameri- 
can spirit. ''It is not to the advantage of 
the individual to make him dependent, to 
abridge his powers of self help or to take 
away his liberty of action so long as he does 
not injure others. Let us help him, certainly, 
if he needs help, but not delude him with 
the error that more is rightly coming to him 
than he has ever earned. For sympathy, 
charity, good example and unselfish public 
service there will always be room, but for 
the suppression of native powers, for abso- 
lute dictation based on arbitrary rules, for 
the assumption that society is more impor- 
tant than those who compose it, there is no 
place in a free republic. " It is too late ! It 
159 



TOMORROW 

is defense of the good old times spoken in a 
voice which leaves little doubt that the new 
times with their new ideas have taken firm 
possession of the land. It is no longer an 
11 as sumption' ' of one or another that "so- 
ciety is more important than those who com- 
pose it," but it is the new light, which illumi- 
nates and warms the new American genera- 
tion. The belief in over-personal values can 
no longer be uprooted and the political cen- 
tralization, the legislative socialization, the 
military preparation, the cultural organiza- 
tion, cannot be delayed. The regeneration of 
the individual must follow — not his rights, 
but his loyalty, his service, his subordination 
to the community and its symbols, will be the 
center of his life. 

A characteristic sign of the advance of 
this new idealism is the constellation in the 
political sky. Three men only are today 
prominent: Wilson, Hughes and Eoosevelt. 
They differ widely but all three are new- 
fashioned idealists. In the German news- 
papers of today — I hope that they will reach 
me in not much more than three or four 
months — the portraits of the three men are 
probably not painted in the colors of 

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IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

idealism; they know Hughes too little, and 
Wilson and Roosevelt — too much! Nor 
would they learn better from the American 
papers; the time of a presidential campaign 
is not made to discover the noble traits of 
a public man. What the party friends say is 
silently discounted, as it is made up for ef- 
fect on the voters, and what the opponents 
say is exaggerated and ungenerous. We all 
know that it is possible to supply low mo- 
tives for any action. History seen from the 
worm perspective is not inspiring; every 
public deed appears as a selfish or even 
mercenary trick. The President may make 
war in Mexico or keep peace; whatever he 
does will be interpreted by such minds 
as a self-seeking maneuver for reelection. 
Owen Wister, the great anti-German patriot, 
sings of the President — his President: 
"You've wormed yourself beyond descrip- 
tion 's reach— Truth if she touched you would 
become untrue." For that type of mind the 
European monarchs are in the war for dy- 
nastic interests and Germany went into the 
war at the prompting of self-seeking junkers. 
You surely ignore such silly slander when it 
refers to the European persons, as you know 
161 



TOMORROW 

better — why can you not neglect it when it 
refers to America? The three political lead- 
ers of. today are not the egotists of the car- 
toons but sincere and loyal idealists. 

It would be poor psychology if I were to 
deny that a vivid self-consciousness forms 
their mental background; without it nobody 
can become influential in American politics. 
They show three characteristically different 
types of self-conseiousness : that of Wilson 
is lyric, that of Roosevelt dramatic, that of 
Hughes epic. Wilson is always contemplat- 
ing; he settles the problems for himself by 
finding a well-balanced formulation; he re- 
flects on his own feelings; he likes to speak 
about his mental pains, his joys, his moods. 
His aim is social peace, international peace, 
harmony, and that is beauty. Roosevelt 
aims toward quick and surprising action ; his 
thought is potential energy; his life element 
is the conflict with beasts or with men, with 
parties or with nations. Hughes aims to- 
ward the earnest fulfillment of tasks per- 
sistently carried through against difficulties. 
Neither the feelings nor the impulses to ac- 
tion are paramount in him, but the deliberate 
decisions of the mind. 

162 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

This difference of lyric, dramatic and epic 
tendency shows itself no less in their stand 
toward the public. Wilson wants to be seen 
and heard; it is not chance that he was the 
first for a century to deliver the presidential 
message to Congress in person. It is the 
wish for the esthetic attitude. He reaches 
his greatest strength when he feels himself 
on the stage with the public in his spell. 
When politicians in Germany asked me 
whether Wilson as international peacemaker 
would not be a partial arbiter, swayed by his 
natural sympathy for the land of his British 
ancestors, I wrote to them at once that his 
deepest trait, the desire for esthetic unity, 
ought to exclude such a fear : he would enter 
so fully into the role of world arbiter that 
all personal prejudices would be entirely in- 
hibited. The lyric mind sinks completely into 
the role to be played : no mind dominated by 
will and none dominated by thought could 
make such an ideal world mediator as one 
controlled by esthetic feeling. The usual im- 
pression, of course, is that not Wilson but 
Roosevelt is the man who seeks the lime- 
light; but in reality Roosevelt's attitude is 
quite different. He is not the actor whose 

163 



TOMORROW 

mind needs the stimulus of being seen, of 
being the center of tense observation ; his ex- 
altation comes from feeling himself the 
leader. He too needs the masses, but in order 
to push them forward by his dramatic tem- 
perament. He is always the colonel who 
charges the hill, conscious that the cowboys 
follow. His joy has nothing to do with the 
impression he makes but all with the im- 
pulse which he stirs up in others. Both Wil- 
son and Roosevelt long for the public, as 
both must be in the center in order to give 
their best. But the chief irradiation is cen- 
tripetal in Wilson's case and centrifugal in 
Roosevelt's case. The strength of Hughes 
lies in his conscious independence of the 
audience. Every true epic hero stands alone. 
A lyric mind needs the admiring approval of 
its followers ; a dramatic mind needs the pow- 
erful effect on them ; the epic mind distrusts 
both the praise and the hypnotic faith and 
prefers the coolness of a sober routine rela- 
tion. Real opposition makes the lyric tem- 
perament nervous, the dramatic angry, but 
the epic strong. Yet, however different the 
self-consciousness of the three leaders, all 
three stand high above the trivial campaign 

164 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

accusations and all three are sincere and 
loyal believers in the new idealism. The 
time which is to come speaks forcefully 
through each of them. 

America does not lack impressive defend- 
ers for the ideals of the past generation. 
Charles W. Eliot is their leader; but just as 
his educational freedom, the free election of 
studies, has been abandoned and is rejected 
today by every single college in the land, so 
his political and economic freedom is repudi- 
ated by the spirit of the new time. The real 
public spokesmen of the nation, Republican, 
Democratic, and Progressive, acknowledge 
only a freedom which involves duty, a rivalry 
which is restrained by over-personal ideals 
of social justice, a government which is not 
the servant of individual interests but the 
representative of the whole nation as such, of 
its honor and strength and social progress. 
No individual initiative will be curbed, but 
the central thought of the new America is 
loyalty, obligation, service. The flag has be- 
come the symbol of a state which is more 
than the mere sum of the individuals who 
pay taxes. The new idealism has its char- 
acteristic American features, but it is the 
165 



TOMORROW 

same new idealism which brought Germany- 
its recent development and which has now 
taken hold of all Europe : it is the new world 
view of that new world which will arise from 
the war. 

But here too, as in Europe, service to the 
will of the organized community is not bound 
up with the single nation. The idea of sub- 
ordination to the will of the unified group 
must remain in force when the organized 
community grows beyond the state and be- 
comes an alliance of nations. Hence the new 
idealism, however much it was originally 
connected with nationalism and military pre- 
paredness, that is, with the rivalry and strug- 
gle of nations, is no less in harmony with 
the ideal of international friendship and or- 
ganization. The new idealism could be 
turned the more earnestly toward its highest 
goals if the will which demands service were 
not only that of the isolated nation but also 
that of civilized mankind. The new idealism 
may have started from the growing nation- 
alism, but it presses toward internationalism 
and through it toward peace. The old senti- 
mental pacificism is probably discarded for 
the near future, but the new sober pacificism, 

166 



IDEALISM IN AMERICA 

rooted in idealism and international organi- 
zation, will surely be as much the symbol of 
tomorrow as the radiant nationalism. Per- 
haps it was unfair when I spoke only of Wil- 
son, Hughes, and Roosevelt as the political 
leaders of America today; I ought to have 
added Bryan, the fanatic of pacificism based 
on treaties. 

The newspapers never believe in Bryan's 
unselfishness and when in St. Louis he turned 
enthusiastically to Wilson's support, they 
asked indiscreetly for what position he hoped 
in case of Wilson's victory, as he must know 
that he could not again be Secretary of 
State. I think the position which he would 
wish to fill is that of ambassador to Ger- 
many, where he would feel sure of a hearty 
welcome on account of his courageous rad- 
ically neutral stand during the war. He 
might possibly be the funniest ambassador 
but at the same time probably one of the 
most effective. Social Berlin would be in 
convulsions over the cultural teetotaler, and 
at every dinner table they would tell near- 
true amusing stories about his naivete; but 
Berlin would discover in him a faith in peace 
and a power for good which might stir 
167 



TOMORROW 

Europe like a revelation — the " guileless 
fool" in Klingsor's magic garden. He would 
truly be a representative of the American 
nation, because the new pacificism will be an 
organic part of the new America. Will it be 
a part of the new Europe too? It sounds 
almost frivolous to speak of organized peace 
in Europe while the headlines report today 
that the greatest battle of the world's his- 
tory, truly the battle of Europe, is at its 
height; and yet, in time of war prepare for 
peace. Indeed, I should not fulfill the task 
which you have set before me if I were not 
to speak of the new movements toward last- 
ing peace. Let it be the topic of my next 
letter ; but I confess I should like much more 
to hear from you what you think about the 
present prospect of peace. It is so difficult 
to remember how it felt to live in the time 
before the war — how long will the unbear- 
able last! 

Yours ever, 
H.M. 



VII 

THE NEW PACIFISM 

My dear Friend: 

Have you ever noticed that the Bible con- 
tains a saying which in the two most famous 
translations, the Luther version and the King 
James version, has a directly opposite mean- 
ing? In the fortieth psalm we Germans read 
the beautiful words: "Und wenn es kostlich 
gewesen, so ist es Miihe und Arbeit ge- 
wesen;' , the English-speaking world reads: 
"And if by reason of strength they be four- 
score years, yet is their strength labor and 
sorrow." The meaning of the English trans- 
lation is : Even at its best life is filled with 
labor and sorrow and therefore filled with 
that which we should like to avoid. The 
meaning of the German translation is: Life 
is truly beautiful only if it is filled with labor 
and toil. The two translators have given to 
the words of the psalmist quite different 
169 



TOMORROW 

meaning : The one sees in labor the crown of 
life, the other sees in it the thorn of life. The 
history of mankind is also a gigantic psalm 
and may be differently translated. This 
psalm speaks of human wars, and the one 
translates it to read: Every nation's life is 
glorious if it is filled with wars; the other 
translates it: Every nation's life is filled with 
wars and therefore lamentable. The trans- 
lations have disagreed for thousands of 
years. Again and again one sees in war the 
thorn of national life and the other the crown 
of national life. Will it ever be settled which 
translation is right? In any case the vehe- 
ment discussions of recent days — mostly car- 
ried on with the naive belief that the pacifistic 
movements of today are an original contri- 
bution of our century — have done little to 
overcome the contradictions of old. 

Wars are evil, are destructive, are im- 
moral, are ruinous, are always avoidable — 
wars are heroic, are inspiring, are progres- 
sive, are necessary. We have not moved 
much beyond this old antithesis. It is true 
we carry on the discussions of today with 
quite new-fashioned biological conceptions, 
but they too serve both sides. In war the 
170 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

strong men go to the battle and are killed, 
while the weak stay at home and survive. 
Hence the biological argument speaks against 
war. But the opposite is true, if the whole 
battling tribes or nations are considered. 
The weak, the degenerate and the decaying 
social groups are destroyed in the fight and 
the strong and healthy ones enlarge their 
power and their traits survive. Hence war 
is the means of the biological regeneration of 
mankind. Nowadays, moreover, the Ameri- 
can pacifists use their biology to tell us that 
the war spirit is a remnant of the aggressive 
instinct in animals. The other side answers, 
of course, that dislike of war starts from the 
animal instinct of hiding; pacifism, we hear, 
is self-abasement. In reality no light is 
thrown on the value of either side by show- 
ing that a type of action can be traced back 
to animal instincts; nothing is great in our 
life which has not its counterpart in low be- 
ginnings. We ought rather to measure our 
social functions by the scale of ideal values ; 
and yet even this does not bring us nearer 
to a decision. The mind which seeks peace 
and avoids conflict loyally serves the ideal of 
harmony and unity, a distinctly esthetic 
171 



TOMORROW 

ideal : the mind which is ready to make sacri- 
fices for the maintaining of its rights in con- 
flict serves no less loyally the ideal of justice, 
an ethical ideal. 

A slightly modern turn is also brought into 
the discussion by the claim that wars are 
stirred up by the selfish interests of diplomats 
or of great capitalists or of munition manu- 
facturers, all of whom seek advantage, glory, 
profit for themselves, without regard for the 
interests of the masses. But it is surely no 
less adapted to the modern world when the 
other side insists that in our period of the 
newspaper and the wire every movement is a 
movement of the nation as a whole and that 
modern wars can be conducted only if the 
whole people stands behind the leaders. The 
masses are more excitable than the men in re- 
sponsible places; in the days of the million- 
fold circulation of the news carriers, war has 
become the most democratic institution. On 
economic ground at least we now know with 
certainty that war never pays, as a whole lit- 
erature has told us with ample statistics; 
and at the same time that a victorious war 
always pays, as no less bulky statistics have 
proved. Culturally the legions of war trample 
172 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

down the harvest of intellectual and artistic 
and social seed. But must not the historian 
add that all the great periods of truly flour- 
ishing national culture, those which have in- 
spired the world forever, have always fol- 
lowed the triumphs of war. Even in the in- 
dividual minds the effects of war may show 
this contrast. Hatred, cruelty, brutality, 
calumny, may devastate the hearts ; and yet it 
is a time in which the spirit of self-sacrifice, 
of heroism, of abstinence, of energy, of pa- 
triotism, overwhelms every selfish and vicious 
and luxurious impulse. 

The historians do not even seem to agree 
as to the actual result, when the increase of 
power for the victor is estimated. Empires 
have been built by conquest as glorious wit- 
nesses of the success of war; but no empire 
in the world has really lasted, and their decay 
always began with the dissatisfaction of con- 
quered lands, an evidence of the failure of 
war. Even when this world war began, the 
opponents of pacifism were quick in claiming 
that the futility of all peace movements had 
now been definitely proved, as never before 
had such a well-prepared framework for 
peace been built up as The Hague conferences 
173 



TOMORROW 

and The Hague tribunal; and yet they were 
immediately followed by the most bloody con- 
flict of all times. But it is surely no less true 
that the outbreak of this war can be con- 
strued as a most gigantic proof of the neces- 
sity of pacifism and as a demonstration of 
the complete failure of the old system which 
relied on rivalry in armament. 

While theory and speculation do not lead 
us further, allowing on every level arguments 
for either side, it seems interesting to turn 
to the concrete facts of historiometric science. 
Woods and Baltzley recently published here 
a brilliant little book "Is War Diminishing?" 
a study of the prevalence of war in Europe 
from medieval times to the present date. 
They measured exactly the length of time 
which each European nation has spent in 
warfare in the various historic periods. Take 
the figures for England. From the year 1100 
to 1900 the sixteen half-centuries showed the 
following numbers of war years : 38, 16, 19, 
17, 39.5, 25.5, 38, 19, 16, 38.5, 17.5, 26, 
29, 26.5, 26, 27.5 ; all together between 1100 
and 1500, 212 war years, and between 1500 
and 1900, 207 war years. For France the 
same figures are: 26.5, 10, 31.5, 17.5, 18, 25, 

174 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

35.5, 17, 29.5, 31, 24, 22.5, 25, 25.5, 18, 17; al- 
together for the first four centuries 181 and 
for the second four centuries 192.5 war years : 
"Is war diminishing?" We are indeed 
hardly aware that in the reign of Queen Vic- 
toria alone England had 29 different wars. In 
Eussia the sixteenth century showed 78.5 war 
years, the seventeenth 57.5, the eighteenth 
49.5, the nineteenth 53. Only in the small 
states like Denmark, Holland and Sweden are 
the war periods distinctly growing shorter 
and shorter ; and the same is true of Prussia, 
for which the table shows that in the seven- 
teenth centuiy it had 58.5 years of war, in 
the eighteenth 31, in the nineteenth only 13. 
The broad result of the book is that when 
the five strong powers, England, France, 
Prussia, Russia and Austria, are separated 
from the five lesser powers, Turkey, Spain, 
Holland, Denmark and Sweden, it becomes 
evident that the stronger nations since 1700 
have devoted the most time to war. But the 
lesser nations were once the great powers; 
Spain, Turkey, Holland and Sweden were 
active in warfare at the same period that they 
were politically great. 

Truly such neglected figures ought to make 
175 



TOMORROW 

us distrustful when well-meaning people rec- 
ommend some new prescription by which war 
will be abolished from the next first of July 
at four o'clock in the afternoon. Neverthe- 
less we pacifists ought not to feel discour- 
aged, because it cannot be denied that certain 
elements of our time are new and do change 
the standing of peace and war. The inter- 
dependence of the nations has been most 
deeply influenced by the economic develop- 
ment of the last half-century. It is this 
change in the material conditions first of all 
which suggests that serious efforts toward 
world peace may be in the future more suc- 
cessful than the record of history alone would 
allow us to expect. But to make such efforts 
really effective, we ought at least to learn 
the lessons of this war and ought not to 
indulge again in illusions which the last two 
years should have dispelled. When the war 
is over the militarists of all nations will 
write whole libraries about the lessons of 
the war, analyzing every success and every 
failure of the armies and navies. But we 
men of peace have still greater interest in 
looking on the war as an inexhaustible 
source of information. We need not wait 
176 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

until it all has passed into history. For 
the first lesson I should pick out at least ten 
pretty clear facts which even the elementary 
pupil ought not to forget. Other lessons, 
with some scores of similar facts, will sug- 
gest themselves later. But these are the ten 
with which I should start. 

First: There is no peace loving nation 
which has not some subconscious love for war 
too. Since the beginning of the century the 
will toward unbroken peace in the world had 
expressed itself so loudly in these United 
States that it could not fail highly to raise 
our hopes. While Europe went on with its 
jealousies and its war preparations we saw 
here at least one great nation on earth which 
seemed resolved to use peaceful means in any 
possible case of friction. How bitter was the 
irony used against the antiquated navalism 
and militarism of decrepit Europe! In one 
night the weather has changed all over the 
land. Suddenly no sarcasm of the comic 
papers, no abuse in the editorials, was so 
sharp as that which turned against the man 
of peace at any price. Whether the enemy 
was to be Germany or Mexico or Japan, the 
makers of public opinion behaved as if the 
177 



TOMORROW 

peace sermons of the last decade had been 
only rhetorical exercises to fill the time until 
the troops should march to some border. A 
regular war hysteria came over the suggest- 
ible parts of the community, and in the Car- 
negie camps the tents were folded and packed 
away. To stand for peace at any price ap- 
peared the meanest mental behavior ; and yet 
what else was demanded from us in all those 
homilies of the past against bellicose Europe? 
Every nation of the Old World was certainly 
ready to pay some price and even a very high 
price to keep peace. If anything different had 
been intended by America, it would indeed 
have meant not to be ready only for a high 
price but for any price short of self-destruc- 
tion. After this year of America's rattling 
the saber, no hope is left that we pacifists 
could rely on the temperament of any single 
large nation. We might still put our hope on 
China, but her case does not seem inspiring. 
It is true the Chinese would avoid war if 
they possibly could, not because they love 
peace better, but because the traditions re- 
sulting from the poverty of the land have led 
to such individual egotism that few want to 
exert themselves for the good of the commu- 

178 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

nity. That will not help us ; after the Ameri- 
can outbreak we must be resigned to the con- 
viction that in the heart of every nation one 
ventricle beats for peace, but the other for 
the "wretchedness" of old-fashioned war. 

Second: There are no really effective 
safety appliances invented as yet. We have 
heard so much about all the factors which 
even in a war craze would make actual war 
impossible. The existence of the pacifistic 
societies and their like was, after all, only 
one thread in the tapestry of our hopes. Did 
we not know that the Socialists of Europe 
would simply prohibit war? The interna- 
tionalism of organized labor would prove 
stronger than the recklessness of govern- 
ments. They would have had the power, but 
they lacked the will; they proved patriots 
above everything else. How often had we 
read the boast that the internationalism of 
high finance would stop any onrush to war! 
Those great bankers are famous prophets; 
they must have foreseen that fifty billion dol- 
lars would be needed to feed the Moloch. Of 
course, the most highly praised safety de- 
vice was the armament itself; Europe was 
armed to the teeth. When the hour of danger 
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TOMORROW 

approached the efficiency of the armor did not 
delay but hastened the clash. If the military 
preparation had been less perfect on all sides 
some further days might have been allowed 
to diplomacy. But each nation knew that 
with the superarmament of today twelve 
hours more time for the secret mobilization 
of the enemy might have the value of whole 
army corps. Some had put their pacifistic 
hope on the women. In no land are the 
women more influential than in America. It 
is a sad chapter: If America keeps out of 
war, it is surely not the merit of the weaker 
sex. The pacifists, the Socialists, the women 
and even the priests have failed to serve as 
brakes on the downhill road. 

Third: There is no treaty among nations 
which is binding under all circumstances. 
Some recent statistics showed that during 
this war sixty definite treaties have been 
broken, but only the more important cases 
were registered in their columns. Not one of 
the fourteen belligerent nations had missed 
its opportunities. Of course, this was no sur- 
prise to the student of history; it has been 
so at all times and in every corner of the 
globe. It is surely not lawlessness. The po- 

180 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

litical conditions of' the world are shifting 
all the time and the treaty of today may con- 
flict tomorrow with a higher obligation which 
has grown up in the meantime. Here in 
America the Supreme Court of the United 
States has clearly acknowledged this right of 
the nations to break their own treaties when 
political necessities demand it. The Supreme 
Court proclaimed "that circumstances may 
arise which would not only justify the gov- 
ernment in disregard of their obligations but 
demand in the interests of the country that 
it should do so. Unexpected events may call 
for a change in the policy of the country." 
It stamps it as the American idea of inter- 
national law ' ' that whilst it would always be 
a matter of the utmost gravity and delicacy 
to refuse to execute a treaty, the power to do 
so was the prerogative of which no nation 
could be deprived without deeply affecting its 
independence." But while treaty breaking 
may be forced on a nation by a change of cir- 
cumstances, no Supreme Court would justify 
a neutral nation in protesting violently 
against such breaches by one belligerent na- 
tion and condoning the breaches by the other. 
Fourth: There is no debatable question 
181 



TOMORROW 

among nations which cannot be transformed 
into a matter of honor. You remember in 
our student days we had always with us that 
type of blusterer who went around looking 
for pretexts for student duels. He kept find- 
ing people who had violated his honor. Of 
course for him it was simply a part of the 
sport. Newspaper discussions about honor 
in times of tension may sink to this level at 
any time. Purely technical points of dis- 
agreement are bolstered up into disputes 
involving the honor of the country. When 
America and Germany disagreed as to the 
permissible armament of a merchantman, 
every long metropolitan editorial intertwined 
the number of inches allowed to the guns for 
defense with the highest honor of the United 
States. As soon as the national honor is 
struck, the chance for arbitration is lost. 
What loyal citizen could allow others to de- 
cide where his country's honor is at stake! 
It is that unreasonable kind of national rea- 
soning which deprives the best planned arbi- 
tration schemes of their value at the decisive 
moment. 

Fifth: There is no event which cannot be 
looked on from opposing standpoints and 

182 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

which may not appear accordingly in an en- 
tirely different light to equally honest and 
sincere observers. The most harmless affairs 
were swollen up by the one and made to 
shrink by the other, sympathies and antipa- 
thies played havoc with the facts, and where 
decisions were to be made the partisan wishes 
molded every happening. Even the same 
story can have a happy ending today and a 
sad close tomorrow, if it conflicts with na- 
tional prejudices. When America took the 
stand that a German submarine cannot tor- 
pedo an armed merchantman because inter- 
national law prescribes visit and search, Ger- 
many protested. Germany claimed that there 
was no international law for submarines as 
yet and that the old rules which were made 
for ships of entirely different type could not 
hold for these fragile vessels which could be 
destroyed by one shot from the enemy. At 
once the anti-German press here howled down 
the German idea. Surely the old rules of the 
game must hold for the new type of ship. A 
little later Germany sent here an unarmed 
merchant submarine, expecting that the en- 
emy would have to treat it like a merchant 
ship and could not destroy it without visit and 
183 



TOMORROW 

search. Forthwith the same papers shouted 
against the German pretensions. Surely the 
old rules of the game could not hold if an 
entirely new form of ship is invented; the 
Allies must have the right to fire at the sub- 
marine as soon as they sight it. Our whole 
headline misery has been caused by this con- 
stant double play. After all, there is light 
and shade everywhere. If you insist on see- 
ing only the one and ignoring the other, you 
can undo any honest endeavors. It is, of 
course, the way in which politics is carried 
on everywhere. At Carrizal the Mexicans 
killed Americans, but under pressure re- 
turned the prisoners. If you want to have 
peace with Mexico, you never mention the 
dead, but make fine editorials about the re- 
turned captives : if you prefer to push toward 
war, forget the prisoners and shout yourself 
hoarse about those who have fallen. All 
this may be right and necessary ; only we for- 
get it too easily. The last two years have 
shown it to us three times a day so glar- 
ingly that we shall remember it better when 
we plan the peace of the future. 

Sixth: There is no historic grouping of 
nations which may not be regrouped at the 

184 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

next turn. How bitter had been the enmity 
between Russia and Japan, and today they 
are the most intimate friends. Russia and 
Bulgaria were most cordial allies, and are 
today the keenest opponents. Italy has de- 
serted its allies of thirty years, Turkey has 
joined Austria, England has clasped hands 
with its arch-enemy Russia, the Boers have 
proved that they are now entirely in harmony 
with England. Neither race nor language 
nor religion nor form of government can 
make the ties binding when the interests push 
in different directions, or can hinder alliances 
when they promise advantages on the way to 
the nearest goal. Later, when peace comes, I 
shall send you my collection of New England 
writings with their republican enthusiasm for 
the government of the czar and their enlight- 
ened admiration for the civilization of Rus- 
sia as against the pseudo-culture of savage 
Germany. In internal politics we knew that 
always, and in every land, elections make 
strange bedfellows, but now we must surely 
keep in mind what queer combinations and 
separations may develop in world war times. 
Seventh: There are no single-minded re- 
lations between two peoples. The statesmen 

185 



TOMORROW 

and the editors and the gossipers all alike 
have always been satisfied with too simple a 
psychology. I do not mean that serious poli- 
ticians overlooked the fact that there are dif- 
ferent parties and different groups in every 
nation and that while one party may seek 
friendship with a neighbor another party 
may plead for the opposite policy. Specula- 
tions about such favorable and unfavorable 
groups have always been the chief part of 
the game. But what they did neglect is the 
complexity of motives in the midst of every 
group and of every individual. They were 
satisfied with the kind of psychology which 
we know from most photoplays of the mov- 
ing picture theaters. These film dramas 
show us only men who say yes or no. The 
routine politician, to be sure, is sometimes 
suspicious and takes it for granted, espe- 
cially if he deals with diplomats, that the 
other man may think yes and say no or think 
no and say yes. But far more important is 
a yes and a no which intertwine in the mind. 
Like and dislike, approval and disapproval, 
friendship and enmity, are consciously and 
subconsciously mixed. Friends may be loyal 
friends and yet a certain suspicion may linger 
186 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

in their souls; statesmen may have the best 
will toward each other, and nevertheless be 
internally prepared for a break; govern- 
ments may be quite frank in their mutual pro- 
fessions of cordiality and at the same time 
foresee that the next turn of the road may 
make them opponents ; whole nations may be 
sincere allies and no less sincere rivals, full 
of distrust and yet full of sympathy. Minds 
of men and of peoples are never pulled by 
one wire only. If the official and unofficial 
diplomats of the world had psychologized a 
little more they would have experienced 
fewer surprises and fewer disappointments. 
Even the question at the threshold as to who 
wanted the war would not have brought for- 
ward such an abundance of rage and excite- 
ment. Everybody hoped most earnestly to 
avoid the horrible carnage, and yet every- 
body felt that the rivalry and ill will in 
Europe had reached a danger point at which 
an explosion would be necessary and that 
only force could end the intolerable oppres- 
sion that choked the world. The govern- 
ments did not want war and yet subcon- 
sciously wanted it. 

Eighth: There is no state form, no gov- 
187 



TOMORROW 

eminent, no constitution, which tends more 
toward the prevention of war than any other. 
In democratic England the secret agree- 
ments of Viscount Grey, of which even most 
other members of the Cabinet were unaware, 
had more autocratic stamp than the policies 
of Russia. The republic of Portugal had less 
power of resistance when England called 
than the kingdom of Greece. The monarch of 
Italy was forced to yield at once to the fan- 
atic pan-Roman wing of his people : the king 
of Roumania succeeded in checking the war 
hysteria for two years. The governments of 
republican France and of imperial Germany 
proved equally the expression of the national 
will. The only surprise for many Germans 
was evidently that the autocratic power of 
the American president in questions of war 
is so much greater than that of the German 
emperor. They had read neither the great 
book on America which history wrote nor 
the humble book on America which your 
obedient servant wrote. But I assure you 
that many Americans did not know more 
about it. The last year has probably taught 
them that America's war or peace may de- 
pend upon the president's meditation in soli- 
188 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

tude. At any moment he may shape such 
policies that the part of Congress cannot be 
more than a mere formality. 

Ninth: There are no longer any romantic 
wars. The general and his white horse on the 
hill with the adjutants galloping hither and 
thither have been replaced by the commander 
in the study with the telephone central sta- 
tion in his anteroom. Lying for weeks in 
muddy ditches, being killed by exploding 
mines or by machine guns, rushing against 
entanglements of barbed wire, righting un- 
seen foes amidst poisonous gases and liquid 
fire : it is simply appalling and horrible. The 
fliers and submarines may kindle the imagi- 
nation ; and yet the real war is a work of the 
organizing staff and of the engineers. Even 
the genuine war correspondent has nearly 
disappeared, and instead of his sprightliness, 
we have the dreariness of the "military 
expert." We have not even the comfort of 
the thought that with the unromantic scien- 
tific management of warfare at least the per- 
sonal suffering of the participants is de- 
creased. The belligerent considers it his aim 
to make the enemy unable to fight, but not 
to make him suffer. Yet in spite of the Red 
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TOMORROW 

Cross, no war in man's memory has brought 
such manifold pain and misery and tor- 
ment. 

Tenth: There is no war which does not 
enrich many people. Few lessons of the last 
two years are so worthy of being kept well 
in memory; not because the fact is so in- 
spiring, but because it explains so much and 
may help to direct the searchlight to many 
dark regions where selfish war agitation is 
busy. Holland's and Sweden's profits from 
the war have been enormous; America's bad 
times after the downward revision of the 
tariff were turned by the European carnage 
into an abundant prosperity; Roumania's 
profitable shrewdness seems to have sur- 
prised all. But still more unpleasant is the 
stream of gold to single corporations and in- 
dividuals in all the belligerent lands. It 
seems unavoidable that everywhere while a 
hundred fellow-countrymen bleed the hun- 
dred and first gathers riches. And worst of 
all such a war is the high time of graft and 
corruption in neutral lands. Believe me, I 
have looked into abysses which made me 
shudder. It can hardly be otherwise : where 
such gigantic interests are at stake, the dis- 
190 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

honest, who is nowhere absent, must find in- 
comparable chances for blackmail. 

I do not care to enumerate today the elev- 
enth and twelfth and hundredth and thou- 
sandth fact which the war has taught us. But 
surely when we ask what the future will do 
in the interest of the new world-wide longing 
for lasting peace, we may take it for granted 
that the teaching of the last two years will 
dominate all coming plans and projects. The 
chief tendency which these schemes and sug- 
gestions will show after the war can be 
traced, I think, even now. The world around 
you, my friend, is naturally so filled with 
the cares of the war itself that project mak- 
ing for the future is today in the background. 
But here on so-called neutral ground the 
plans tumble over one another. Let me be- 
gin with an impossible one. It is hardly a 
plan. It is a dream: the idea of complete 
disarmament of the world. I do not mean to 
say that such a stage of the world would be 
impossible for all times. Mankind has 
learned to live without slavery, which surely 
seemed necessary everywhere in earlier 
times. Why may not the future learn to live 
without soldiery? Even those may be right 
191 



TOMORROW 

who prophesy that the technical overdevelop- 
ment of the means of armament will finally 
lead to war's self -destruction. When science 
makes it possible to annihilate not only mil- 
lions as today, but hundreds of millions, the 
civilized world would commit suicide if it con- 
tinued the martial sport. 

But our question is not what may be prob- 
able after hundreds of years; we think of 
tomorrow. And even if the leading nations 
were to agree whole-heartedly that their ad- 
vance would be safer if every thought and 
every means of forcible attack on one another 
were abolished, the gun factories could not 
close their doors, as the unarmed nations of 
highest culture would be the easy prey of the 
semicivilized peoples. The power which 
broke the old Roman Empire was the un- 
civilized tribes of the northern forests. Man- 
kind still possesses many reservoirs of fresh 
and untried energy. Armament of the na- 
tions for physical protection will be neces- 
sary tomorrow as it was yesterday. It may 
even be seriously doubted whether the much- 
favored idea of partial disarmament can ever 
be realized. If the great nations arm at all 
for purposes of war among one another, it is 
192 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

illogical to demand from them not to put 
into their preparation all their available 
energies. As long as fighting is going on 
at all, nobody can be expected to fight with 
half steam only. If all is to be gained or all 
is to be lost, each nation will demand the 
freedom to make nse of all its resources. 
Yes, it must be acknowledged that as long 
as the principle of preparedness for war is 
accepted only those draw its really logical 
conclusion who think the more the better. 
The nation best protected by all the means of 
physical and chemical technic, by the training 
of armies, by the development of miltary sci- 
ence in the staff and military spirit in the 
people, will be most sure not to be attacked. 
In short, we have before us the old plan : the 
true means to keep peace is to secure the 
strongest possible defensive armament. 

Yet the world has lost confidence in this 
classic advice. We heard it a little too often 
just before the greatest of all wars in history 
broke out. Of course, each nation may justly 
say that if it had been less prepared the 
enemy would today stand at the gate of its 
capital. And if Germany is accused of hav- 
ing done its share with the greatest thorough- 

193 



TOMORROW 

ness, the Germans can answer that their mili- 
tary preparedness secured peace for them 
through forty-four years in which every other 
great European nation went to war. Yet 
Germany had to learn that even the greatest 
preparedness of a single nation will not pro- 
tect it against hostile machinations which 
lead to war if a powerful combination of 
enemies can be formed. Moreover the tre- 
mendous complexity of the armament brings 
the danger nearer, as it makes a delay in 
the first attack more dangerous. Finally the 
luxury of all such insurance against war had 
become from year to year more costly. 
Armies and navies were sapping the savings 
of Europe. Can this mad race of armaments 
be continued at the billion rate after a war 
the debts for which will have to be paid by 
two deplenished generations? 

The initial problem is, then, how to fight 
the armament fever, as long as the principle 
of armament remains in force. One important 
plan is certainly worth discussing. It is the 
taking over of all manufacture of munitions 
by the governments. This would abolish at 
least that unsound incitement to overarma- 
ment which results from the chance for pri- 

194 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

vate profit. Yet this would demand legisla- 
tion all over the world; legislation is under 
the influence of press and lobby; press and 
lobby in at least two-thirds of all nations are 
accessible to golden arguments, and the steel 
manufacturers and munition makers can pro- 
duce a thousand times more of this particu- 
lar kind of argument than all the poor peace 
apostlesi together. Moreover, the opponents 
of the plan have at least one sound and rea- 
sonable plea. If the state manufactures the 
munitions for its own use, in times of peace it 
will adjust its factories to the modest needs. 
If war comes, they cannot suddenly be en- 
larged to the vast dimensions which the 
emergency demands. Private enterprises, on 
the other hand, the Krupps, the Creuzots and 
their kin, can keep the biggest furnaces burn- 
ing all the time because some countries, how- 
ever far away, will always be in need of their 
supplies. A little compromise between the 
factories and the voters will probably be 
cooked up, but a great reform in the arma- 
ment situation will hardly be secured. The 
true advance will have to come from within. 
The policies of men will have to be changed. 
Their beliefs and emotions, their aims and 
195 



TOMORROW 

their institutions, must be reformed in order 
to make their armaments more and more 
superfluous. Many put their confidence in the 
most direct method of reaching this goal : we 
must educate the world toward a pacifistic 
view of international relations. It is not 
necessary to think only of Chautauqua meet- 
ings and women's clubs and peace-dove pa- 
rades. The approach to the minds of the na- 
tions may be a much broader one. It may be 
started in the schools. Can we deny that in 
all lands in which the youth learns history at 
all the one great teaching is that wars and 
battles have been the most important events 
in the world and the men on horseback the 
leaders of mankind 1 We can tell the story of 
three thousand years with entirely different 
high lights. Instead of tracing it from 
Achilles to Hindenburg, we may go from 
Moses to Edison and Richard Strauss. 

But the approach may be not only broader ; 
it may be deeper. With all the means of 
science and economics, of statistics and his- 
tory, of biology and sociology and hygiene, 
we ought to underline the arguments against 
war. Theoretically, no doubt, each pacifistic 
reason can be answered, but if our emotional 

196 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

personality feels powerfully drawn to the 
side of peace we ought to make those anti- 
war arguments so resounding that they at 
last stir the popular imagination. Then it 
is not a question of objective truth but of 
social religion. If we are faithful believers 
we are not obliged to work as missionaries 
for the truth of the opposing religion. Let 
them continue to say that war is necessary. 
We know in the depths of our hearts that 
the world needs peace ; let us therefore preach 
from every pulpit and from every housetop 
that the advantages of war are illusions, that 
war only breaks down and never builds up, 
that war hinders progress, that war has be- 
come superfluous, that people who believe in 
justice will never again have wars. 

Such a religion, however, demands its 
churches and its priests, and it cannot be 
denied that its organization so far has been 
pitiful. We have a few scattered two-room 
bureaus in Switzerland, in Holland, in Amer- 
ica, and a few amateur speakers, some minia- 
ture funds for scattering anemic pamphlets, 
and the only trophy is a couple of Nobel 
peace medals. Wells rightly says: "The 
world is a supersaturated solution of the 
197 



TOMORROW 

will-for-peace and there is nothing for it to 
crystallize upon. There are many more peo- 
ple and there is much more intelligence con- 
centrated upon the manufacture of cigarettes 
or hairpins than there is on the establishment 
of a permanent world peace." This will be 
changed after the war. The appeal is so 
strong that the service of the peace idea may 
become a real calling and profession like 
teaching and preaching and curing. If a 
large part of the population were sincerely 
to believe that war is murder, the guns would 
rust. 

Some have also proposed to undermine the 
war idea by removing the fundamental cause 
for war, which is claimed to be the desire for 
foreign territory. "The desire for acquir- 
ing new territory may become manifest only 
when occasion offers to gratify it, but it is 
ever present in each and every nation. At 
times it asserted itself even in such a peace- 
loving people as our own; think only of 
Mexico and Texas, of Alaska, Hawaii, Porto 
Rico, Philippines." If an American speaks 
thus, with how much more truth a Euro- 
pean could link the wars of the past with the 
wishes for enlarged territory! Wars will 
198 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

disappear as soon as it is agreed that in fu- 
ture no territory can come under the control 
of a new possessor. The plan is typical of 
the idle fantasies which abound in the paci- 
fistic paradise. Plenty of other reasons led 
to war even where territory was coveted ; the 
desire was often only the accompaniment of 
deeper emotions which really caused the war. 
But a gTeater obstacle is that such an agree- 
ment would not be guaranteed; it would be 
broken after the usual pattern of war-makers. 
On the other hand, if a world government 
could be formed which would make sure 
that the agreement was kept, no such special 
ban on territorial changes would be needed: 
such a government would itself be sufficient 
to enforce peace. But finally the medicine 
would be as bad as the disease. It would 
mean that the distribution of lands at this 
chance moment of history would be artifi- 
cially maintained for all time. The stream 
with all its waves would suddenly be frozen ; 
nothing could move on. The development of 
history would stop; aspiring nations would 
be unable to grow, decaying nations would be 
left in their abundance. For six thousand 
years we can follow the growth and fall of 

199 



TOMORROW 

ever new nations; and tomorrow we are to 
decree that for the next six thousand years 
this natural process is to stop and every 
square foot is to be left to the heirs of those 
who inhabit it today. Such an age would be 
not only peaceful but stagnant. As long as 
the nations have a right to land as national 
property, the right to enlarge the posses- 
sions is needed. I have pointed out before 
that the only true remedy would be the aboli- 
tion of territorial property in the way in 
which the socialists want to abolish capital. 
But while the attractiveness of such radical 
reforms may be doubtful, their present im- 
possibility is sure. What else? 

It has been proposed to further the cause 
of peace through the application of the insur- 
ance idea to international affairs. Certainly 
the principle of insurance has been found 
fruitful and powerful and unifying in the 
social structure of individual men; why not 
make it serviceable to nations I Mutual inter- 
national insurance would protect the partici- 
pants against the destructive calamities due 
to war. But only the losses of those nations 
are to be reimbursed which are attacked; 
the nation which begins the war loses the 
200 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

right to compensation. Not political govern- 
ments but trustees would have control of the 
distribution. The plan was hatched in the 
midst of this war; and yet this war is the 
most convincing argument against it. To 
begin with, would any insurance arranged 
ten years ago have provided for the enor- 
mous sums which alone could pay the dam- 
ages for this disaster? What nation would 
have been willing to pay the premium for it, 
as it would have meant to double the taxes? 
Instead, each nation would have preferred to 
insure itself or would have hoped to find 
indemnity through a victory which dictates 
the conditions to the enemy. Moreover, has 
this war not impressively shown that the 
thought of mere material losses is every- 
where the least decisive factor? Each of the 
fourteen nations in the struggle has proved 
its readiness to sacrifice all earthly goods for 
the spiritual values — how can financial insur- 
ance influence history? And is it to pay for 
the five million dead and the ten million 
crippled? 

But the central error of the plan lies in 
the idea that he who starts the war is to be 
punished by losing the indemnity. Has this 
201 



TOMORROW 

war not sufficiently taught the world that it 
is entirely arbitrary ever to decide who has 
made the first move in the war game ! There 
is no reason to believe that future genera- 
tions will know anything about the beginning 
of the present war which would substantially 
change the evidence of today. Sympathy and 
antipathy will shade the events of 1905 to 
1915 after centuries as much as today, just 
as for instance the lifework of Luther and 
the whole history of the Reformation are 
even today characterized by Protestant and 
Catholic historians with opposite epithets. 
Whether King Edward VII with his encir- 
cling policy or Emperor Franz Josef with his 
ultimatum to Servia or Czar Nicholas with 
his rapid mobilization or Emperor William 
with his ultimatum to Russia started the war 
is not a question of fact but of interpreta- 
tion. If Carrizal had led to war, would 
America or Mexico have started it? It is 
always the same story; and this most sub- 
jective element is proposed as the one ob- 
jective pivot on which all hinges. 

But let us not think of such amateurish 
patchwork. The masters of the craft have 
built better: the hope of the maturest paci- 

202 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

fism rests on the prevention of war by courts 
of arbitration, by treaties for retardation, by 
enforcement of delay. I know you are a 
great believer in these new-fashioned entan- 
glements for the bellicose. I share this belief 
but faint-heartedly. I do not believe that 
they are real historic solutions, and therefore 
I have no confidence that they will be power- 
ful factors in the future. Certainly the ma- 
chinery for arbitration will be steadily im- 
proved by the political engineers. The beau- 
tiful palace in The Hague will again open 
its gate of hammered iron about which the 
spiders now spin their webs; international 
rules will be agreed to in new Hague con- 
ferences; new declarations of London, of 
Paris, of Berlin will replace the old ones 
which the war has riddled. Yet no force 
stands behind the Hague decisions. Will the 
nations really be satisfied with an arbitra- 
tion court when vital questions are involved? 
Routine conflicts, of course, have often been 
settled without war ; the judges then simply 
continue the work of the diplomats. But 
when momentous questions of national fate 
demand a conclusion, will the great nations 
put their honor and existence into the hands 
203 



TOMORROW 

of judges? I fear the time is still far dis- 
tant. They know too well that every inter- 
national agreement allows many interpreta- 
tions. When the officers of the German 
Mo ewe brought the English steamer Appam 
into the American harbor, they relied on the 
old Prussian-American treaty which seemed 
so perfectly clear ; and yet the lawyers found 
a way to interpret the agreement so that the 
Allies could take the prize ship away from 
the German captors. The analogy of inter- 
national courts with national ones fails not 
only because there is no superior force to 
back the decision, but also because there is 
smaller chance of finding really impartial 
judges free from national prejudices. 

Yet the historic shortcoming of the inter- 
national court has deeper reasons. There 
have been few wars in modern times in which 
right was on one side and wrong on the other. 
Only in histories rewritten for boys and girls 
are right and wrong fighting. It would be 
easy to suppress war in the world if simply 
the just and the unjust stood opposed to one 
another. In reality, the typical case which 
leads to war is one in which a good right 
suffers from the contest with another good 
204 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

right. In almost every struggle of nations 
both sides are right and both would be un- 
worthy of their heritage if they did not stand 
for their good cause. In other words — I do 
not say in nicer words, but in those which 
the pacifists have forced on us — the real 
cause in almost every modern war was not 
justiciable. Real international wrongs have 
mostly been hushed up and have seldom led 
to bloody conflicts; unjust intentions have 
usually won by bribery. No international 
tribunals are needed for the culprits; they 
work with subtler means than war. But when 
the clouds of war are massing above the 
horizon and when a true struggle of peoples 
is near, good rights stand against good 
rights, rights inherited, rights won through 
honest work, rights acquired by custom. No 
judge knows means of justice by which he 
can decide between two equally good rights 
when they are unfit for compromise, and the 
best meaning council cannot bring help. If 
a final decision is secured by power and pas- 
sion, it is not that might intrudes upon right, 
but that might steps in because, where equal 
right is on both sides, the judge is helpless. 
But, then, at least, we ought to rule out 
205 



TOMORROW 

the passion; nobody ought to take up arms 
until a year has passed, a year in which com- 
missions have gathered and examined and 
recorded the facts and made the complex 
issues simple, or — which usually is still more 
quieting for passions — made the simple issues 
confused. But will the hysteria of a yellow 
press yield to the zeal of chairmen and re- 
cording secretaries until twelve months have 
passed over the injury to the nation? Only 
one way seems open — a might must be estab- 
lished which is stronger than the right of 
self-defense. We must be able to compel the 
unruly nation by militant power to wait a 
year at the gates of the arena. This is the 
program of the League to Enforce Peace, 
with the "Enforce" printed red in the title. 
Will it really bring us salvation? 

At the threshold we must not forget that 
the year of enforced waiting would protect 
any wrongdoer. If a wrong can be continued 
in any case for a whole year, the injury may 
have become irreparable; to take away the 
weapons of protection for a year may mean 
to make the victim helpless and to settle the 
issue against the innocent. A nation may 
violate the sea rights of another, may destroy 
206 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

its mail, blacklist its commerce, and yet it 
may be entirely safe in doing so for a year 
because no threatening ultimatum is per- 
mitted. But worse than that, instead of cool- 
ing the war temper, the year of delay might 
simply become a year of wild preparation 
which would raise the passion to fever heat. 
If the nations of Europe had foreseen the 
war of today and had known the date of its 
beginning a year before, each would have 
known how to use the available time. Kussia 
would have hastily completed its railway 
system; France and England would have 
strengthened their war industry; and, above 
all, Germany would have prepared by provi- 
sioning itself for years like a fortress. She 
could have done it easily ; her lack of prepa- 
ration was her only misfortune; it would 
have been avoided if the German govern- 
ment had known a year, or at least a month, 
before that the break would come. 

Moreover, the year of preparation would 
not only include guns and shells, flour and 
canned goods, but alliances ; the year would 
become a year for the expansion of the crisis. 
More and more nations would take the one or 
the other side, and the provincial struggle 
207 



TOMORROW 

would swell during the year into a conti- 
nental warfare. But worst of all: a strong 
people, unwilling to give the opponents all 
the chances for a year's sinister preparation, 
would send its ultimatum before that date; 
and the result, according to the plans, would 
be that all the nations of the league would be 
obliged to enter into the struggle. Every 
local fight would thus have a tendency to 
grow into a world war; truly such a League 
to Enforce Peace would be a league to endan- 
ger peace. Some imagine that such a gen- 
eral disaster would be averted because no 
nation would dare to face a whole world in 
arms. Yet the Germans have had to fight 
against fivefold superiority, and after two 
years practically no enemy stands on German 
soil. Above all, such a fight of the world 
against one is a fiction which would never be 
realized. A nation in the league might be 
bound by the obligation to turn against the 
power which declared war. But this might 
conflict with its other duty, to defend a friend 
or a neighboring people whose welfare might 
be intertwined with its own free existence. 
In the real setting of the historic nations 
not one can be crushed without weakening 
208 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

certain others, and these certainly have no 
right to sacrifice their own future. Auto- 
matically they would join the friend, and the 
outcome would be one alliance against an- 
other alliance, a battle front of many thou- 
sand miles where without the league a few 
short contests might have settled a provincial 
quarrel. 

The League to Enforce Peace is like the 
league for the use of Esperanto. This, too, 
was invented in order to harmonize the na- 
tions of the globe. Their common mistake 
is to fancy that in the world of history an 
artificial, abstract construction can replace 
that which has grown organically. The lin- 
guistic forms of a nation's expression and 
the emotional forms of its friendly or hostile 
behavior cannot be created in a philological 
or juristic laboratory; they have to grow in 
free historical development. The mere ab- 
stract formula for international war obliga- 
tions, treating each case after the same log- 
ical pattern, must remain a failure. It will 
always be brought to nothing by the organic 
alliances which are held together by the self- 
conscious will and the historic interests of 
great nations. All the proposed means to 
209 



TOMORROW 

enforce peace are still so doubtful and so 
open to discussion that these plans surely 
ought not to be mixed up with the peace con- 
ference at the end of the present war. The 
peace agreements which we need today in 
order to stop the carnage have nothing to 
do with the plans for the future prevention 
of war. The one would disastrously inter- 
fere with the other. Let us have peace first 
and then when good will on earth has re- 
turned, let us consider what the world can 
do to further the chances for its continuation. 
We must have at first the old peace again 
before we can establish the new pacifism. 

But have I really enumerated all the essen- 
tial plans for the strengthening of future 
peace? Preparatory armament or partial 
disarmament, prohibition of private muni- 
tion sales, propaganda for pacifistic theories 
and establishment of pacifistic bureaus, 
agreements forbidding the transfer of terri- 
tory, war insurance, economic isolation of the 
peace disturbing nation, arbitration courts, 
international councils, commission investiga- 
tion and leagues of nations to enforce peace 
by war : are they the most important weapons 
against future wars? I have my psycholog- 
210 



THE NEW PACIFISM 

ical doubts. Through all these schemes we 
try to serve peace directly. Surely they all 
may be helpful and therefore desirable, but 
the greatest aid to peace must come indi- 
rectly. The nations must serve peace with- 
out being aware that it is an especial service. 
All these elaborate efforts are negative ; their 
conscious aim is not to have war. What the 
world really needs is the positive assertion 
of good will and harmonious cooperation 
which carries peace with it as a natural by- 
product which does not absorb special atten- 
tion. Friends nowhere need systematic 
arrangements to inhibit struggles; there is 
no impulse toward fighting among them. The 
real advance of any individual does not re- 
sult from his efforts to fight mistakes but 
from his will to do the right thing. The 
progress of mankind must come along the 
same road. The nations must approach one 
another, must learn to understand one an- 
other, and bind themselves together not for 
the suppression of war but for the construc- 
tive work of the world. Peace will then be 
the wonderful fruit which is ripened by the 
warmth and sunshine. Historic alliances and 
organizations which have been organically 
211 



TOMORROW 

developed for common achievement will be 
the true warrants and sureties for lasting 
peace. As soon as firm international organi- 
zations are formed, the international courts 
will easily come to their rights. But through 
such organizations the new pacifism turns 
into a new internationalism. Let this be the 
center of my next letter. But I notice my 
letters have grown longer and longer. You 
may feel like Goethe's wizard's apprentice, 
who called the magic servant to bring water, 
but who did not know how to check the flood. 
Yes, your question about the changes after 
the war started this epistolary inundation. 
But let me comfort you at least by the prom- 
ise that the next two letters on international- 
ism will surely be the last. Hence I hope you 
will pardon 

Your old friend, 

H. M. 



vin 

THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

My dear Friend: 

Do you remember our long walk on the 
beach to the queer old fishermen's town when 
you visited us many years ago here at our 
summer place? You were delighted with its 
quaint New England streets. In the mean- 
time I have become acquainted with many 
of the good old-fashioned people there. They 
have such odd ways of talk; one phrase has 
struck me often : they call everyone who does 
not belong to their little town a "foreigner." 
They are doubtless patriotic citizens of their 
country and yet their fellow-countryman of 
the next town is to them a foreigner, simply 
because their town traditions are so essential 
to them that anyone who stands outside ap- 
pears sharply separated from their little 
world. But sometimes I must think that they 
simply say what most people feel: an alien 
213 



TOMORROW 

is to most men anyone who is not spun into 
their particular traditions and prejudices. 
We all are queer townspeople who know only 
our local or provincial or national home 
ideas and do not admit the stranger to the 
familiar streets of our mind. Is it not a 
vain undertaking ever to preach the spirit 
of internationalism? Have not these years 
of war annihilated even that faint feeling of 
world-community which had developed in 
"the piping times of peace"? Not only at 
the belligerent coasts were the gleaming sig- 
nal fires extinguished when the war began; 
it became dark on neutral shores too and 
dark on the shores of our friendships. 

We who had faithfully devoted our life- 
work to the hope that America, Germany and 
England would grow into a firmly allied 
group of friends had to suffer most from the 
sudden loss of international sympathies. We 
had confidently believed that the inner unity 
of these three Teutonic nations would be the 
greatest power for world harmony. Surely 
this faith which inspired us did not grow 
from any lack of sympathy for other na- 
tions. Who did not feel in those sunny days 
of yore that his life was richer for the con- 
214 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

tact with the fascinating brilliancy of France 
and the mellow beauty of Italy, with the 
genial spirit of Austria and the inexhaustible 
soul of Kussia, with the admirable dash of 
Japan and the tremendous power for civic 
good in the small states of Europe? Never- 
theless to us the great historic chord was 
America, Great Britain and Germany, three 
nations so different in traits and traditions 
and yet so alike in their health, strength and 
moral energy. We felt they were the three 
really progressive peoples which ought to 
work in growing friendship for the glorious 
advance of the world. The fulfillment of 
these wishes had seemed so near. Every day, 
we fancied, brought the three peoples more 
cordially together, the three Teutonic master- 
nations in which the aristocratic will toward 
highest civilization blended with the demo- 
cratic spirit of individual responsibility. And 
suddenly hatred hissed through the Teutonic 
lands. Every British thought was red with 
rage against Germany and every German 
feeling hurled its anger against England. 
America boiled with indignation against the 
kaiserites, and the Fatherland was disgusted 
with America. Even England's contempt 

215 



TOMORROW 

for America broke out again, and America 
came to the end of its patience with a nation 
which destroys its mail and its trade with 
the neutrals and humbles it by its black- 
lists. 

A bitter warfare of minds came over the 
three peoples and all the dreams of the bet- 
ter past were cruelly shattered. I know some 
months ago you took a more optimistic view 
and wrote to me that the so-called "hatred" 
had really vanished in Germany. It broke out 
at the beginning of the war, when it had a 
kind of social function. The depth of indigna- 
tion, you said at that time, was necessary in 
order to stir everybody to those unheard-of 
sacrifices which the defense against fivefold 
superiority of men demanded from every Ger- 
man ; but it has long since yielded to an emo- 
tion of higher order. You said that the Ger- 
mans of today are simply bound by the sol- 
emn resolution to fulfill the historic task of 
winning this war; the God of history gave 
them a duty to be performed. Of course, 
there are temperamental variations, but I 
think you are right as far as the masses of 
the people are concerned. I am inclined to 
think that a similar change has come to Eng- 
216 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

land and France. It lies in the character of 
French journalism that the language of ex- 
treme emotion still makes itself heard in 
strident tones when the thoughts have so- 
bered down. 

But the passion of hatred is still sweeping 
through the streets of the American East. 
Indeed I have the impression that the Ger- 
mans are unaware of the extent to which the 
American rage has gone. They always fancy 
that it is only the sensationalism of the press 
which fosters the anti-German hysteria of 
the public. They have no idea how far the 
churches, how far the universities have gone, 
and, alas, how far press, priests and profes- 
sors have leavened the whole social loaf. Let 
us not deceive ourselves. The operations are 
well under way to have this American hatred 
perpetuated when the war excitement has 
died out and to inject a cruel unfairness into 
generations to come, generations which them- 
selves will not know in what narrowness they 
have been nurtured. The entire school life 
will be rilled with an anti-German spirit, un- 
less radical changes can be effected. In the 
field which is nearest to you and me, the field 
of scholarship, the devastation is almost 

217 



TOMORROW 

tragic. In the European countries where 
the scholarly work stands in the foreground 
of public esteem and is perfectly protected 
by old traditions, the danger is small. Any 
yielding to the passion of the hour, however 
unfortunate, will soon be corrected. No 
German will ignore or belittle the scholarly 
contributions of Frenchmen or Englishmen, 
and vice versa. But in America where 
scholarship has not yet come to its own, 
where it is not backed by public esteem but 
has to defend itself constantly against the 
world of affairs, the present breakdown of 
the truly scholarly spirit may be irreparable. 
The most alarming symptom of the Amer- 
ican situation, however, is that the hatred 
against Germany has become the passport 
to social prominence. The large middle class 
of the people is essentially fair, but the layer 
which travels to Europe knows London and 
Paris a hundred times better than Berlin and 
Vienna. Knowledge means habit, and habit 
means sympathy and love. The predomi- 
nance of the woman in American society with 
her easily excited emotions and the influence 
of the social climbers are especially respon- 
sible for a passionate one-sidedness of the 
218 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

upper class, which far surpasses the bellig- 
erent setting of European society. 

And yet, my friend, it is my sure belief 
that in America as well as in Europe sanity 
will return and that without any superficial 
concessions in the realm of principles the de- 
mand for fairness will soon prevail again. 
Do not forget that the nations at war have 
been too much in contact throughout these 
years not to become fully aware of the noble 
and strong traits of their opponents too. 
However much indignation may be expressed 
in the lines, between the lines you can read 
the growing respect. I know the low estimate 
which the average German had of the moral 
fiber of the Frenchman: he saw in France 
a decadent nation which had lost its courage 
and spirit of sacrifice. This hasty contempt 
has yielded to respect, nay, to admiration. 
The judgment about England was more fa- 
vorable, but the average German had no idea 
of the firmness of the British Empire. He 
knew that through three centuries a ruthless 
warfare had subjugated one-fifth of the 
globe. But he did not grasp the earnestness 
with which the British nation had fulfilled 
its civilizing mission and its duties toward 
219 



TOMORROW 

its colonies. The loyalty with which the dis- 
tant members of the Empire and even the 
Boers stood by the island has certainly im- 
pressed every fair German and altered his 
opinion about the English. 

Western Europe on the other hand has rec- 
ognized clearly how superficial had been the 
talk about the difference between govern- 
ment and people in the Fatherland. They saw 
how millions of volunteers rushed forward 
and how all parties were united in the sup- 
port of the governmental policies. More- 
over they had derided the German thorough- 
ness as stupid pedantry; soon they recog- 
nized that it was the indispensable condition 
of efficiency in the hour of pressure, and their 
imitation expressed their approval. Many 
such elements of respect have intertwined 
with the hatred of the belligerents and weak- 
ened it. The Americans have been less 
touched by such passing emotions because 
they are too far off, but where an actual con- 
tact occurred, new sentiments flashed up. 
No doubt the first submarine which crossed 
the ocean and brought a peaceful message 
into the harbor of Baltimore has caught the 
American imagination, and the cordiality 

220 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

shown to that brave little crew contrasted 
charmingly with the heat of the standard 
editorials. The world moves forward, while 
hatred pulls backward. 

The fundamental trouble, after all, lies in 
the lack of mutual understanding. It has al- 
ways been so and the war has only reaped 
the harvest. The nations of the world do 
not know one another, and where the 
acquaintance remains on the surface any 
artificial agitation in favor of or against a 
nation can succeed, as it nowhere finds re- 
sistance. If the appeal to emotional preju- 
dices is skillfully made, the image of the na- 
tion becomes distorted for better or for 
worse. Today the Americans with sincere 
enthusiasm look on England, France and 
Russia as the countries which stand for free- 
dom in the world. The suggestion of the pro- 
Ally propaganda has simply extinguished 
the memory of all which the history of the 
last few centuries has taught. The three na- 
tions which have built up gigantic empires 
by relentless conquest, enlarging and enlarg- 
ing their territories by overpowering nation 
after nation without ever asking their con- 
sent, are suddenly brought into contrast 

221 



TOMORROW 

with Germany, which is today still like a 
pygmy among giants. It would be so easy to 
reverse the picture. 

Within a few weeks Charles W. Eliot has 
sharply formulated the reasons why the 
Americans ought to enter the war on the 
side of the Allies even at this late date in 
the third summer of the war. They must 
do so because the American ideals coincide 
with those of the Allies and are opposed to 
the German ones, which are in every respect 
the contrary. Those American ideals are po- 
litical and social. The social ones Eliot 
states as follows: "1. A mobile social state 
in which the individual is free to do his best 
and to enjoy the fruits of his efforts. 2. Uni- 
versal education, not confined to childhood. 
3. The habitual expectation of more truth, 
light and good for mankind. 4. Publicity. 
5. Efficiency through freedom and a disci- 
pline in which free men cooperate. 6. Wide- 
ly diffused private property protected by 
equal laws." Now can anyone who really 
knows Germany doubt that every one of these 
six social ideals is a fundamentally German 
ideal? Those who are not well informed 
need only to read some of President Eliot's 
222 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

former speeches, one of which was made only 
a few months before the war, in praise of 
German universal education and of German 
freedom and discipline. It is not much dif- 
ferent with regard to the political ideals. 
He formulates them: "1. Government rest- 
ing on the consent and cooperation of the 
governed. 2. Manhood suffrage. 3. The 
elective executive. 4. Just and equal laws. 
5. The general good. 6. The popular as- 
sembly, democratic or representative.' ' Can 
it really be claimed that these six political 
ideals are realized in America and the allied 
countries but opposed by Germany, and that 
America ought to sacrifice its youth on the 
battlefield in order to crush Germany's re- 
sistance to these ideals? 

Of course, those who know the character 
of German government only through the 
caricatures would claim that "resting on the 
consent of the governed" indicates the dif- 
ference. The German would say, on the con- 
trary, that the American government lacks 
that consent, as President Wilson was elected 
by a minority of the voters, the majority not 
consenting to the principles of his platform. 
In Germany, he would add, the whole nation, 

223 



TOMORROW 

with the exception of the small radical wing 
of the social democrats, stands solidly be- 
hind the Kaiser. That is the whole meaning 
of the German idea, that national leadership 
ought to rest on the consent of the nation 
and that that is possible only if the leader is 
not elected by struggling parties. The in- 
heritance of the rulership makes it exempt 
from rivalry and dissent and transforms it 
into a symbol of the national spirit sup- 
ported by the cheerful trust and belief of all. 
How much ill will would evaporate if people 
everywhere understood better the meaning 
of foreign institutions and recognized that 
the difference of means and methods does 
not mean a difference of ends and ideals ! 

But there would be little hope for the 
harmony of the world if we had to wait until 
the nations learned about one another all of 
which they have shown themselves ignorant 
during the war. The only hope which we 
can foster is that they at least may try to for- 
get those travesties of the truth which the 
malice of the hour has created in every land. 
The mob shouts everywhere, remember this 
and remember that and remember every- 
thing. The psychologist cannot contribute 
224 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

anything better to the discussion than the re- 
minder that the mind has mechanisms for 
well-selected forgetting as well as for re- 
membering. Most people think of forgetting 
as if it were a weakness and a defect. Surely- 
much which we forget fades away from our 
mind because we are unable to hold it. Even 
that is a useful arrangement as we should 
be overburdened if every insignificant de- 
tail of our experience were to linger on in 
the reservoirs of our memory. But we know 
today that there is a more delicate adjust- 
ment of the forgetting process to the needs 
of life. Our subconscious mechanisms can 
inhibit those memory ideas which are linked 
with unpleasant emotions. We all shall need 
a certain impulse to repress some painful 
memories of these war years, but we can rely 
on the power of such a resolution. We really 
can forget, and there would be faint hope 
for reconstruction if we were to refuse to 
cross this bridge to a better time. What is 
the use if a reasonable man like H. G. Wells 
ends his book "What Is Coming'?" with the 
pledge, "I will do all that I can to restore the 
unity of mankind," and yet adds as the last 
word: "Nevertheless is it true that for me 
225 



TOMORROW 

for all the rest of my life the Germans I 
shall meet, the German things I shall see, will 
appear smeared with the blood of my people 
and my friends that the selfishness of Ger- 
many has spilled. " With such logic of the 
heart a thousand million people can today 
barricade for themselves every outlook to- 
ward the ' ' unity of mankind. ' ' If every Ger- 
man should say too that for the rest of his 
life every English and French and Italian 
and Russian gift will be stained by the blood 
of his German comrades which the jealousy 
and revenge of the Allies have shed, or that 
everything which comes from America will 
be tainted with the blood of his friends and 
brothers whom American ammunition killed, 
we should never go beyond the disheartening 
misery of today. It is so easy to remember, 
but true culture shows itself in the more dif- 
ficult art of forgetting. 

Yet even the war has not shaken my faith. 
However widely the spirit of nationalism 
may spread its wings, I feel convinced that 
a new internationalism will develop no less 
powerfully when the days of peace have 
come. I expect that the commerce of the 
world will give the signal for international 
226 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

reconstruction. The Paris preparations of 
the Allies for an economic warfare after the 
military one may have sounded terrifying; 
and yet they will not be realized. The war 
cannot be closed by a peace which denies 
peace. Moreover, strong demands and low 
bids will meet each other, however high the 
patriotic fence which may be erected. Divi- 
sion of economic labor is a tremendous sav- 
ing, and Europe will be too poor after the 
war to afford the luxury of disregarding this 
economy. Political custom unions at first 
may bind only smaller groups, but very soon 
the world will again be one great market, 
and soon enough the shop windows of Paris, 
Berlin, Vienna, London and New York will 
be glittering with the same trinkets from all 
over the world. The flag of the merchant- 
man will carry good will over all oceans ; and 
high finance, after profiting not a little from 
the war, will profit still more from the eco- 
nomic unity of the nations. 

I put my hopes no less in the cultural in- 
terrelations. You know I have always be- 
lieved that political harmony can be devel- 
oped best from a mutual cultural under- 
standing. You remember that this was the 
227 



TOMORROW 

real starting point for the Amerika-Institut 
in Berlin, the plans for which I submitted to 
the German Government and which I organ- 
ized later in the year of my exchange pro- 
fessorship. I felt that it was unsatisfactory 
to leave the spiritual interests of the nations 
entirely to accidental contact. Just as there 
are diplomatic agencies for the exchange of 
political interests, and chambers of com- 
merce and clearing houses for the economic 
life of the peoples, a clearing house for 
cultural exchange seemed to me needed in our 
complex times. And did I not tell you, when 
I showed you the beautiful Berlin institute, 
how much I hoped that it would soon be en- 
larged beyond the mere America-Germany 
sphere into a general institute for interna- 
tional cultural relations? I was sure that 
the other countries would soon follow the ex- 
ample and a network of bureaus devoted to 
scientific and artistic, social and spiritual 
give and take would be spun around the 
globe. It might have become the most pow- 
erful help toward international cordiality. 
The war broke in before that work could be 
completed. 

But whether it is developed in future days, 
228 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

whether cultural exchange is systematically 
planned and furthered by special establish- 
ments, or whether it is left to the chaotic en- 
ergies of the millions, in any case the work 
of the national mind will not be bound by any 
frontiers. It will carry its message to for- 
eign lands as before, will soon again have 
won sympathizers, friends and admirers, and 
again in the works of genius we will have 
' ' travelled in the print of olden wars, yet all 
the land was green, and love we found, and 
peace, where fire and war had been." My 
chief trust is in science and art. The philoso- 
phy of hatred can be the text only for some 
short speeches ; the big volumes of the libra- 
ries will be written in the spirit of philoso- 
phy. I am still stirred by the thrill of an epi- 
sode which lies a dozen years back. It was the 
time of the Russo-Japanese War. Six hun- 
dred leading scholars of the world had been 
invited to St. Louis as guests, of the World's 
Fair to the great Congress of Arts and Sci- 
ences. On the evening of the festive ban- 
quet the most famous jurist of Japan made a 
great speech about the role of scholarship in 
the life of mankind. Opposite him sat the 
Leading astronomer of Russia, and suddenly 
229 



TOMORROW 

the Japanese shouted as the climax of his 
speech that this assembly hall of the scholars 
was the only place in the world where a Japa- 
nese would be ready to shake hands with a 
Russian. And the man from Petrograd stood 
up and cordially shook the hand of the man 
from Tokyo, while the hall thundered with 
the applause of their colleagues. "Wherever 
two scholars meet the soul of mankind is 
present. 

I am the last to preach the cosmopolitanism 
of science; truth must be clothed in its na- 
tional garb. Three times three is nine for 
men of all countries, and yet even mathe- 
matics has a different character in France, 
in Germany, in England, and a thousand 
times more is this valid for the fields of non- 
mathematical knowledge. History and phi- 
lology, economics and philosophy, biology and 
medicine, jurisprudence and theology, can 
never be molded in an international cast. 
Their national and to a large degree their 
personal coloring is their strength; and yet 
they all contribute to the world system of 
knowledge, which cannot be split into a pro- 
Ally and an anti-Ally scholarship. No na- 
tional scholarship can be great unless it is 
230 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

faithful to international endeavor, and the 
ultimate test of its value will remain its in- 
fluence on the thought of the world. I know 
that in Germany the new nationalism pleads 
for a kind of intellectual embargo. The stu- 
dents of the world have come to German uni- 
versities and have taken away with them the 
ideas and methods which have helped the for- 
eign lands. I hope sincerely that this petty 
view will not prevail. Whoever spreads the 
national gifts of the spirit cannot lose anything 
but only win through cultural influence. A 
national scholarship surrounded by a Chinese 
Wall is not protected but in gravest danger. 
The damage which these years of war have 
brought to the world of thought has been al- 
ready so great that all nations will have to 
stand together to repair it with an enthusi- 
astic movement toward open-hearted and 
fair-minded internationalism of thought. 
The feeble efforts of academic exchanges in 
the past will be outdone by great systematic 
works of cooperation. As a reaction from 
the terrific disaster an international human- 
ism like that in the days of the Renaissance 
will spring up in the civilized nations. 

Art and music, literature and the drama, 
231 



TOMORROW 

will flourish with the same expansive "ten- 
dency. All the suffering and all the inspira- 
tion of this incomparable time will live in 
the creations of the national arts of every 
nation and will fill them with national heart- 
blood. But wherever they reach greatness 
the national song of agony or of joy will ring 
through the world. Every war has stimu- 
lated the imagination of the peoples who 
lived through the overwhelming excitement. 
If a harvest of beauty grows from the blood- 
drenched soil of the world tomorrow, it will 
cover many ravages of today. The same will 
be true of the technical inventions and prac- 
tical devices, of the educational advances and 
social improvements, of the political ideas 
and public reforms, wherever the leading 
minds create them. They will be the more 
efficient the more they are produced by the 
conscious energies of a particular nation, but 
their efficiency will show itself best in the 
molding of the international life. The prob- 
lems of labor, of capital, of women, of the 
child, of sex, of vocation, of the church, the 
problems of alcohol, of crime, of punishment, 
of mental deficiency, the city problem, the 
rural problem, the today unshaped problem, 

232 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

will be furthered in one land tomorrow only 
to stimulate the experts and the amateurs in 
every land the day after tomorrow. The fash- 
ions without and within will spread as be- 
fore, and before long we shall again have 
world's fairs and world's vanity fairs in 
which every nation will be welcome. At the 
beginning there will be still some moral re- 
sistance on all sides to certain companion- 
ships ; soon it will shrink to a mere formality, 
and after a while even this will appear petty, 
old-fashioned, and finally tasteless. 

But the internationalism which will grow 
after the war is not confined to the spreading 
of commerce, culture and reform. The na- 
tions will not only give and take their na- 
tional products in eager exchange, but they 
will and must combine their efforts for com- 
mon purposes. The indignant pose cannot 
last long when a thousand tasks of interna- 
tional communication and transportation, of 
hygiene and law, of credit and safety, can be 
performed only by united labor. There is no 
use in abuse if hands must be clasped. Mail- 
ing and shipping, traveling and migrating, 
telephoning and cabling, copyrighting and 
patent protecting, trading and exchanging, 
233 



TOMORROW 

fighting crimes and disease with common ef- 
fort, cannot stop in order to let the world 
know that the German deed against the Sus- 
sex or the British deed of the Baralong is 
still alive. The work of the world cannot be 
done by sulking, and there will be very much 
more work to be done by the European peo- 
ples among their ruins than they ever had to 
do in their gay surroundings of yesterday. 
The distress which stalks through all coun- 
tries alike will force on them the need of co- 
operation, far beyond the necessities of the 
past. Surely at the international conferences 
of government deputies and in the congresses 
of administrative specialists there will be at 
first some cool and stiff bowing; groups will 
be formed in various corners of the hall, and 
in the discussions some sarcastic words will 
scratch old wounds. Yet even the sharpest 
discussion binds men together, and the devo- 
tion to the common task of the future will be 
stronger than the separating memory of the 
past. 

The fighting nations of today can upbuild 

their national happiness only if they work 

with one another, and that means finally for 

one another, with an energy which was hardly 

234 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

needed in the comfortable days of Europe's 
peace. Too many new problems have been 
added by the war itself. New central insti- 
tutes for world interests, new international bu- 
reaus, official and unofficial, will be demanded. 
The elaborately drawn city plan for a beau- 
tiful world center to be built somewhere in 
Switzerland or in Holland for the settling of 
the common affairs of all nations was mostly 
glanced at with a smile when it was sent 
around by a committee shortly before the 
war ; the need seemed too remote. After the 
war the world may feel otherwise. It seems 
high time that the common work of all na- 
tions be brought more forcefully to the fore- 
ground of interest. The world post bureau 
in Berne remains the model, but the nations 
have now discovered that they have more to 
do with one another than to write letters and 
postal cards. Great changes are to be secured 
in many fields, unless all peoples alike are to 
suffer from the past and are to remain threat- 
ened by ever new disasters. Supernational 
organizations will be inevitable for many 
functions which so far had been left to na- 
tional initiative and accidental international 
contact. 

235 



TOMORROW 

I hope confidently that such new structures 
will not remain isolated but will slowly be 
combined in a general superstructure above 
the national civilizations. It is of small value 
to discuss at this early date how future gen- 
erations ought to work out the details of such 
a world constitution, in which the civilized 
states and the semi-civilized territories of the 
world would be combined. Whether the dele- 
gates to the congress of the United States of 
the World will be apportioned according to 
the number of inhabitants of the various 
countries or to the area or to the wealth or 
to the literacy, or whether each one will have 
the same number of delegates — why ought 
we to wrangle about the problems of those 
who come after us! We know that we shall 
not see such a parliament and that if we were 
to see it, it would prove helpless and ineffi- 
cient, because the time is not ripe. Too many 
stages must still be passed through. Too 
many smaller organizations and looser feder- 
ations must be tried and tested by mankind 's 
experience before that firmest tie can bind the 
world together. But this ultimate stage of 
our hopes cannot even be approached unless 
we of today clearly recognize that such an 
236 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

international organization would in no way 
interfere with a vigorous and powerful na- 
tionalism. 

Europeans have pointed to the Pan- Amer- 
ican Union as a model for larger organiza- 
tions which may lead on to better times. I 
doubt whether the model can have real sig- 
nificance. This purely geographical combina- 
tion is, after all, so completely controlled by 
the United States that any analogy would be 
misleading. But both these United States 
and the German Empire suggest in a more 
promising way the solid union of equals 
which keep a far-reaching independence and 
a healthy cultural self-consciousness. The 
kingdoms of Saxony and of Bavaria and of 
Wiirttemburg or the republics of Hamburg 
and of Bremen have not lost their govern- 
ment or their independent control of schools 
and universities, of social, legal and economic 
affairs, by having become organic parts of 
the German Empire. But surely if it is im- 
possible today for Bavaria and Saxony or 
for Pennsylvania and Virginia to have a war 
against each other, it is because an embrac- 
ing federal constitution unites them for great 
common work. If they had combined their 
237 



TOMORROW 

state powers only for the one purpose of 
fighting war, and if they had established a 
supreme court which would settle the quar- 
rels of the single states among one another 
without the background of one common legis- 
lative and executive activity, they would 
never have succeeded. 

William R. Vance in a recent paper on 
1 ' The Supreme Court of the United States as 
an International Tribunal" reminded us that 
during the period between the end of the Rev- 
olutionary War and the establishment of the 
Constitution, the existing confederation of 
the states bound them together only in name. 
"During this disturbing period in American 
history there existed among these states all 
those vicious influences which have always 
made for war, of the kind that have had much 
to do with bringing on the present war in 
Europe. There were boundary disputes, vio- 
lations of sovereignty, local greed and self- 
seeking, commercial rivalry with trade re- 
strictions and discriminations and retalia- 
tory legislation and even racial jealousies. 
The state of New York was particularly hos- 
tile to her neighbors and proceeded upon the 
theory that her wealth and commerce could 
238 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

be built up only by tearing down that of her 
neighbors. . . . The saving feature of the 
new constitution was the federal judiciary, 
headed by the Supreme Court vested with au- 
thority to settle controversies between the 
states.' ' But would this judiciary and this 
Supreme Court have been thinkable if in all 
other respects the thirteen states had re- 
mained unbridled and disunited? That Su- 
preme Court was the crowning feature of the 
United States Government, but it could never 
have been established or would never have 
fulfilled the aim, if there had not been a com- 
mon president and congress charged with an 
abundance of peaceful functions outside of 
the negative one of suppressing quarrels and 
wars. 

This is the point which the pacifists are in- 
clined to overlook when they gather their an- 
alogies from history. Their hopes for a su- 
preme court of the world must be in vain as 
long as all the non-judicial international or- 
ganizations are insignificant. England's re- 
lations to the other maritime powers cannot 
be settled so simply as those of New York 
State to its neighbor states were harmonized 
by the establishment of the Supreme Court, 
239 



TOMORROW 

unless some world president or at least some 
world commission regime with a world con- 
gress stands behind it. The question of the 
physical force by which the will of the world 
organization can be made paramount for each 
incorporated nation offers much less diffi- 
culty. If a real positive statelike world or- 
ganization can be formed, it ought to be pos- 
sible to check every recalcitrant people by 
economic and cultural isolation. The special 
military force would then be secondary. The 
cutting off of all communication and ex- 
change might prove more powerful than 
force. But we must begin at the beginning. 
The world federation must be established in 
order to have the basis for the truly impar- 
tial world court to which every nation is 
ready to submit its grievances; the court 
alone cannot work. The federation, on the 
other hand, cannot develop through mere 
plans for a judiciary, but essentially from 
productive organizations. The new interna- 
tionalism will surely advance along this line. 
But it will advance the more steadily the 
more it moves on by slow steps and is not 
misled by will-o '-the-wisps. This means that 
the world federation ought to be an ideal, but 
240 



THE NEW INTERNATIONALISM 

cannot possibly be a platform. The mere 
legal arrangement would be an artificial de- 
vice ruled by abstract ideas and not by the 
living powers of history. The federation will 
be the final result of such a historic develop- 
ment if it slowly grows out of the needs of 
the active nations, but it must have ages to 
mature. The only true historic form for 
which we can hope at a time within our reach 
must be more modest and more limited. 

We must have wide organizations for tech- 
nical or cultural purposes and in the sphere 
of pure politics combinations of large and 
small nations. If such organizations have 
strictly military character, they are hardly 
more serviceable for the final federation idea 
than any other technical union. But the ex- 
periences of the recent past suggest that na- 
tions which cooperate will feel the need of a 
fuller approach. They will be ready to or- 
ganize more than the mutual help of armies 
and navies; they will prepare for common 
peaceful achievement and production as well 
as for common dangers and emergencies. 
This spirit of organization and of efficiency 
through common thorough preparedness has 
taken hold of the world in the last two years 
241 



TOMORROW 

and will remain the strongest influence for 
the near future. The international combina- 
tions of powers will show this new spirit 
more than any other smaller human group 
can show it. What may be the leading group 
in which this new trend to international or- 
ganization will appear? I, for one, should 
say: Germany, England, America. I can 
imagine how your indignation rises : how can 
I dare ! I do, but I shall give you a week to 
ponder on it and to cool off, and then I shall 
write to you more fully about it. Hoping 
that at least it will not dissolve the old alli- 
ance between you and me, 

In cordial friendship, yours, 

H. M. 



IX 

THE RECONSTRUCTION 

My dear Colleague: 

I plunge at once into our controversy, feel- 
ing more than ever the shortcomings of such 
written words. How I should like to hear the 
clean-cut answers with which you enliven and 
enrich debates ! Instead of it I must stick to 
my monotonous letter paper. But the argu- 
ment for my political heresy would run as 
follows. Of course, the idea of allies today 
suggests to the world the nine nations which 
are combined in the war against the central 
powers of Europe. But I ask myself: Can 
they hope or do they even wish to remain 
members of an alliance when the great war 
at last comes to its end! Too much has 
leaked out. The interests are too diverging, 
the national temperaments too different, the 
historic tasks too much opposed: with the 
hour of peace the alliance of today will break 

24-3 



TOMORROW 

asunder. It was a team harnessed for the 
task of an hour. Each of them, right or 
wrong, was set against Germany for reasons 
of its own, reasons as unlike as possible. It 
was a master stroke of British diplomacy to 
weld those different hostilities into one great 
encircling power. The great conflict between 
England and France had to be suppressed, 
so that the French-English harmony could 
be demonstrated at Algeciras ten short years 
after the heated days of Fashoda. But the 
more difficult task in the service of the new 
campaign was to inhibit the traditional en- 
mity between England and Russia. They 
know that their fight has to be decided at the 
frontiers of India, and the two empires face 
each other like two wrestlers, making each 
move with masterly diplomacy and with a 
consciousness of tremendous power. They 
do not build for a day but for centuries. 
Russia pressed toward Constantinople ; Great 
Britain could not allow Russia's control of 
the Mediterranean. It is not long ago that 
the music halls of London resounded to the 
wild applause for the popular song which 
ran: "We have fought the bear before, and 
while we are Britons true, the Russians shall 

244 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

not have Con-stan-ti-nople." For one sharp 
war against their inconvenient neighbor who 
spoiled the Balkan policy of Russia and 
pressed hard the British commerce in the 
world market, this fundamental contest could 
be set aside. But they remain "Britons 
true, ' ' and however the war against Germany 
ends, the British-Russian world conflict will 
be the same after as before the war. 

Have Russia and France any interest in 
continuing the alliance? The Russians never 
liked it, but accepted it because the great 
money-loaning nation was ready to give 
billions for the Russian armament and 
especially for the military railway sys- 
tem on the Russian-German frontier. The 
French hope for revenge appeared near 
fulfillment through the Russian alliance, 
and no sacrifice for it seemed too great. 
Those billions are lost: Russia will not 
be able to repay them after this war; Al- 
sace-Lorraine has proved with the blood of 
her children that it is German to its heart's 
core, loyal to the one thousand years of its 
history. What interest can keep the Czar 
and the French President in political union? 
Italy has quickly become the burden on the 
245 



TOMORROW 

shoulders of England, France and Russia. 
To have forced Italy's entrance into the 
war on the side of the Allies was perhaps 
the most serious mistake of judgment which 
the Allies have to regret. At one stroke the 
empire of Austria-Hungary was united and 
the Balkans estranged. Italy's interests con- 
flict with those of the Allies at almost every 
point. Japan has shown its world policies 
with perfect frankness. The treaty between 
Japan and Russia is certainly one of the 
greatest political events of our time. The 
two strongest Asiatic forces have joined 
hands and instead of struggling about Korea 
or Manchuria, they unite for the supremacy 
over China and the Pacific. The Asiatic 
Monroe Doctrine is declared and England 
knows that Japan is playing its bold game 
against British power in Asia. The new 
treaty practically annihilates the old one be- 
tween Japan and England. The Oriental 
ally, the cleverest of them all, is the only one 
which is a sure winner under all circum- 
stances, but it cannot in future remain allied 
with England, France and Italy. In short, 
the team of today must break up when the 
war is over. It is an artificial combination 

246 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

bound together for a momentary effect ; there 
is no inner blending, no organic unity, no his- 
toric promise. This dissolution of the alli- 
ance after the war certainly does not suggest 
any disloyalty of its members as long as the 
war lasts. 

Such is the future of the Allies, but who 
will be the allies of the future? Can we 
determine the horoscope of the century? I 
think in one essential aspect the psychologi- 
cal setting of the coming age can be clearly 
foreseen: the fundamental antithesis of the 
political world will be that of Great Britain 
and Eussia. Other possibilities have often 
been discussed. Some expect the grouping 
of the whole of Europe against the whole of 
America. But that is a map-made and not 
a mind-made opposition. South America 
stands nearer to Southern Europe than to 
the United States, Western Europe nearer to 
the United States than to Eastern Europe. 
Moreover, Asia cannot be left out in any fu- 
ture combination: Pan-Europe and Pan- 
America are no longer the world. The prog- 
nosis of some German extremists that the 
great antithesis will be central Europe 
against the field is no less unhistoric. Even 

247 



TOMORROW 

if Germany and Austria were to end the war 
with a triumph far beyond the present ex- 
pectations, any peace which is really a peace 
and not a continuation of the war in a modi- 
fied form must reshape the present unnatu- 
ral constellation. Germany would sacrifice 
its success if it did not join other powers, 
as its political aims and its economic life 
conditions are opposed to any aloofness. 
Germany has not sought the dominant role 
of the conqueror who stands alone against 
the world. Not a single great political or 
economic principle would separate Germany 
from both Western and Eastern Europe at 
the same time. A fundamental grouping for 
and against Germany will be utterly mean- 
ingless as soon as this war is ended. 

The German Empire, even with all the 
colonies which it ever had, covers only the 
tenth part of the British and the eighth part 
of the Russian Empire. These are the two 
great conquering nations of the globe, and 
their planful expansion might indeed involve 
future world conflicts. Pro-Germans and 
anti-Germans will be in the future no more 
the chief opponents than Pan-Europeans and 
Pan- Americans ; but Britons and Russians 

248 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

will be and must be the next protagonists in 
the drama of the century. They will not be 
the last and even a fight to the finish be- 
tween them would not mean the end of the 
human struggle in wars and war substitutes. 
It may be that old peoples like the Chinese, 
the Zionistic Hebrews, the Persians, or new 
peoples like the Australians, the Boers, the 
South Americans, will develop into overpow- 
ering nations which will arise against the 
leading peoples of today. But for the next 
two or three generations such a revolution 
seems impossible: the strategic position of 
the leading nations of our time is so strong 
that the decisive issues will lie among them. 
The issue of Britannia or Russia will be the 
central one. But neither country will stand 
alone. One alliance is definitely settled: the 
union between Russia and Japan will be un- 
shakable, as it serves common interests which 
must steadily grow. But Japan, as soon as 
it is supported by Russia, becomes an antag- 
onist to the historic tasks of the United 
States. It must seek not only the control of 
the Philippines, but of the Pacific. Mexico 
would be Japan's natural ally. America 
can meet this danger only by some kind 
249 



TOMORROW 

of understanding with Great Britain. Eng- 
land and America will balance Russia, Japan 
and Mexico. A prophecy which goes up to 
this point seems pretty safe, as the psychol- 
ogy of the situation simply demands this 
grouping. 

But as to the next great move on the chess- 
board foresight is much more difficult, as two 
possibilities seem open. Germany will have 
to join the one or the other party ; Germany 
will combine with Russia or with England. 
While their land is eight or ten times larger, 
Germany's power, mightily strengthened by 
its successes in the war, is amply sufficient 
to make its ally by far superior to any op- 
ponent. That side to which Germany adds its 
weight on the scales of Europe will outbal- 
ance every adversary. No doubt if this de- 
cision has to be made a large part of the 
German people would prefer to turn to Rus- 
sia. The terrors of the Cossack invasion in 
East Prussia, the most horrible outrage of 
all the war, will not have lost their grip on 
their minds, but the instinctive reaction 
against England will be stronger. The con- 
viction that England forced this war on its 
economic rival by harnessing Russia and 
250 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

France will never be given up by the Ger- 
mans. Moreover, long historic traditions 
back such a German-Russian understanding. 
The Japanese would welcome it heartily. 
The alliance of Germany, Austria, Russia, 
Japan, would be easy and comfortable. It 
would be the safer as it would be controlled 
by the prospect of a common gain : All alike 
would profit from a victory over England. 
Many Germans believe that France would 
also join the Russian-German union. 

Yet it would be a tremendous calamity. It 
would burden the highly progressive culture 
of the fatherland with the companionship of 
the heavy oriental semi-culture of the Musco- 
vites. Concessions to such a backward civ- 
ilization, however fascinating its somber 
beauty and however valuable its deep reli- 
gious fervor, would slowly weaken the inner 
German life. But another result would be 
still more disheartening: an alliance with 
Russia would be the straight way to a fur- 
ther war. The momentum of the Russian 
Empire forces expansion wherever the re- 
sistance is weak. Russia, stimulated by the 
ambition of Japan and supported by the army 
of Germany, would be no longer free to* 
251 



TOMORROW 

choose; it would have to take up the fight 
against the great invader of Asia. India 
would be liberated from the English yoke 
in order to come into the sphere of Russian 
and Japanese influence: Asia for the Asi- 
atics! Germany would be lured into such a 
war by the hope of breaking forever the Brit- 
ish supremacy of the sea. This war, in which 
Eussia, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Japan 
and Mexico would fight against Great Brit- 
ain and the United States, with the position 
of France and Italy in doubt, would be a 
superwar to which the struggle of today 
would appear a mere preamble. Its outcome 
would be doubtful, but whoever won, the 
devastation of the civilized lands would be 
terrific. For the first time the whole of 
Asia and America would tremble, and Europe 
would be drenched in blood. Is that the pros- 
pect with which the belligerents of today are 
to go home from the trenches 1 Will the peace 
for which we all long really mean only a 
short truce and more horrible war at the 
next signal! The mere thought of it is un- 
bearable. It cannot be, it must not be, and 
yet it will be, unless from the start power- 
ful energies force the development into the 
252 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

opposite direction. Germany's alliance with 
Russia is war; the only other possibility is 
a German understanding with Great Britain 
and America. 

If the three great Teutonic nations enter 
into a practical union, the peace of the world 
is secure for children and children's children. 
Great Britain's navy, Germany's army and 
America's economic power, nay, Great Brit- 
ain's colonizing genius, Germany's thor- 
oughness and America's energetic op- 
timism make an invincible team. It would 
be an organic union and the whole new set- 
ting of the world would have truly historic 
meaning. East Europe with Asia on one 
side, Central and Western Europe with 
North America on the other side, is a di- 
vision of the northern world in which the 
inner forces of the century are really ex- 
pressed. It would be no artificial binding to- 
gether, but the natural organization of two 
groups of divergent spirit and interest. This 
antithesis of Orient and Occident would not 
presage an armed conflict. It would be a 
perfect balance in which the only power which 
must seek expansion, Russia, would be held 
in check. With Germany on the English 
253 



TOMORROW 

side Russia could never attack India. The 
unstable equilibrium of past combinations 
would have been replaced by a perfectly sta- 
ble one. It might not mean the end of war 
forever. Nor would it mean the end of arma- 
ment. On the contrary, Germany will have to 
build a wall of bayonets along its eastern 
frontiers, even if an autonomous Poland is 
created as a buffer state. But while pre- 
paredness would remain necessary, the two 
groups would be able to live side by side en- 
gaged for two or three generations in their 
inner development, without actual friction in 
the regions of contact. 

Each of the two groups would be the nu- 
cleus for a much larger combination. Aus- 
tria, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, 
Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, would clus- 
ter about the German-English-American cen- 
ter. Each of them accordingly would be at 
last in a historic position in which they 
could organize their own members into a 
firmer union. For a long time it will surely 
not be a real federation. Neither the Asiatic 
East European group nor the American West 
Central European group will have a common 
government. But some kind of representa- 
254 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

tive assembly will surely be established for 
these combinations of the future in order to 
settle their common concerns. As these af- 
fairs of the various groups overlap and as no 
war cloud will be on the horizon the different 
congresses may slowly be interconnected, and 
the civilized world will become more and 
more accustomed to the plan of organized 
action. It need not be and ought not to be 
a repetition of the anemic Hague conferences, 
which had the stamp of insincerity and in- 
efficiency from the instant of the first invi- 
tation of Czar Nicholas. With them the idea 
of world organization started wrongly be- 
cause their only function was to forbid. True 
organization must begin — a psychologist can- 
not say it too often — with positive construc- 
tive common work. The so-called "interna- 
tional law" must be almost the by-product of 
the assemblies which serve the great cultural, 
social, hygienic, technical, scientific, statisti- 
cal, philanthropic and moral tasks. The im- 
portance, breadth of action and power of 
such a central body must naturally grow by 
itself and will approach more and more the 
form of a federal government. But long be- 
fore this last goal is reached the organization 
255 



TOMORROW 

will have gained sufficient strength to be a 
background for a world tribunal with really 
impartial judges and moral and economic en- 
ergies sufficient to enforce the verdict. 

No necessity determines Germany's future 
course. It can be foreseen with certainty that 
after the war Russia and Great Britain will 
be the centers of two world groups, but 
whether Germany will join the one or the 
other cannot be predicted. The only pos- 
sible prediction is that the Russian-German 
alliance would mean perpetual war, and the 
British-German understanding would prom- 
ise long, unbroken peace. We who want peace 
and who believe that it would be madness to 
make this carnage continuous can therefore 
see clearly for which decision we ought to 
work. The parting of the ways is near. No 
more solemn duty is before those who look 
with open eyes into the distance than to warn 
and to warn the Germans against the Rus- 
sian companionship and to urge and to urge 
a firm, frank German-British union with the 
United States as the third chief associate. 

I have no doubt, my friend, you will read 
these pages of my letter with distrust and 
embarrassment. You will shake your head 
256 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

and say that the hope of a German-British 
understanding is an epigram not worthy to be 
taken seriously. Certainly at this hour, when 
the struggle is at no war front so bitter as 
where German and British troops face each 
other, it sounds paradoxical. Yet it would be 
poor politics to suppress an appeal because it 
may startle at the first moment and to wait 
until it pleases everyone ; then it may be too 
late. Think of it quietly and your reasoning 
will end at this same conviction. I have 
made a test. Recently I published an essay 
in the leading papers of New York, Boston 
and Philadelphia, pleading with similar argu- 
ments for future German-British-American 
sympathy. An avalanche of letters rushed in 
upon me. About fifteen per cent came from 
Anglo-Americans who denounced the plan ve- 
hemently: "Not until Tirpitz and every 
junker is burned alive": "Decent nations 
like England and America can never deal 
with savage barbarians," and so on. More 
than ten per cent were from Germans and 
German-Americans who spoke a similar 
slang : ' ' First Grey must be hanged " : "No 
community possible between honest Germans 
and English brutes and criminals." This 

257 



TOMORROW 

"was to be expected. I was psychologist 
enough to foresee that both the anti-German 
and the anti-British extremists would de- 
nounce me as a poor psychologist who does 
not understand the emotions of the indignant 
peoples. But about seventy-five per cent of 
the letters spoke quite a different language. 
Many confessed that they had been surprised 
at first, but that they recognized, "It has 
to be." The majority, however, welcomed 
the plan from the start and many were filled 
with jubilant enthusiasm. I do not ask for 
your enthusiasm : it would even be improper 
for the belligerent peoples, as long as the con- 
test of the armies lasts. I ask you only to 
acknowledged, "It has to be" if the peace of 
tomorrow is to be more than the signal for 
the most frightful world war in the days to 
come. 

In every land there are carpet-baggers who 
are bound to make a mess of reconstruction. 
Let us beware of their egotism and let us be- 
ware no less of those who remain slaves of 
their war mood and of their indignation. To 
satisfy their patriotic grudge is to them more 
important than to build up the strength and 
honor and safety of their country. The Ger- 
258 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

mans and English and, alas, the Americans 
will have to forget much which has set their 
blood boiling. Mistakes, serious mistakes, 
have been made on all sides and have been 
sincerely regretted on all sides. Much which 
has been done by each people with historic 
justice and with clear conscience had to 
appear to the other party as wrong and 
infamous. Peoples ought to be judged only 
by those who are able to enter with full un- 
derstanding into their real motives : in war- 
time the opponents and their sympathizers 
are unwilling and unable to do so. The hatred 
had its time, but after the war the more sig- 
nificant emotion of the Germans, Britons and 
Americans ought to be a common feeling of 
regret that anger blurred their vision so 
sadly. War is war, but peace ought to be 
peace, and the nightmare must be shaken off 
with the fresh morning. Sober statesman- 
ship must replace both sentimentality and 
hatred. 

But as soon as this goal is recognized, it 
is not enough to begin the organization after 
peace is made. The peace negotiations them- 
selves must be a loyal preparation for the 
coming of a true peace and organisation. If 
259 



TOMORROW 

any great nation were crushed or humiliated 
at the end of this war, the time which comes 
would be one of preparation for vengeance 
with all its bartering and intriguing. More 
than that the chances would be ruined if any 
peace conditions were to contain the germs 
for later conflicts, and, in particular, conflicts 
between Germany and England. It was the 
glory of the past to end a war with the tri- 
umph over the foe thrown to the dust; it is 
the spirit of our time to see the goal of bat- 
tles in social combats and in war not in the 
crushing of the enemy but of the enmity. 

If both Germany and England look into the 
future with this temper some demands for the 
peace overtures seem essential. Germany 
must not keep possession of a square foot of 
Belgium. The Flemish part of Belgium is 
racially united with the Empire and in the 
routine style of the past the conqueror might 
claim its possession. But it is Germany's 
duty to withdraw. German fortresses on the 
Belgian coast would be like a pistol directed 
at England's breast. The instinctive feeling 
that Germany would be a danger if it occu- 
pied Belgium brought England into the war ; 
this feeling must be respected ; the whole of 

260 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

Belgium must go back to the Belgians. On 
the other hand, England must respect the in- 
stinctive feeling which made Germany rest- 
less. The Central Empire is choked and can- 
not breathe freely so long as it has no large 
colonial possessions. The Germans with their 
tremendous energy and industry cannot ex- 
pand in Europe where solid formations limit 
their land east and west, and they came too 
late for the distribution of the uncivilized 
world. England, France, Italy and Russia 
found the world before them, but for Ger- 
many no chances were left, and wherever ac- 
cidental openings came England opposed 
Germany's ambition, fearing that her world 
market might suffer from the new rival or 
that her supremacy of the sea might be dis- 
turbed by a German hold on some distant 
coast. Here England must see that peace can 
be lasting only if the mighty energies of 
Germany, strengthened by the new successes 
of the German army and by the incompa- 
rable striving of German industry and civic 
efficiency, find an outlet in wide fields of 
colonial activity. 

How the details may shape themselves no- 
body can foresee. Surely France, too, must 
261 



TOMORROW 

receive back all the lost European territory. 
It may be that in exchange Germany will get 
a part of Morocco and of the French Congo. 
Poland must at last be autonomous. For 
Germany this concession to the spirit of na- 
tionalism may mean a sacrifice, as it may dis- 
quiet the Poles in eastern Prussia. Old Ger- 
man Courland must go back to Germany. 
England, which never loses, may win Egypt 
and perhaps parts of German Southwest 
Africa. But Russia, too, ought to leave the 
field satisfied. The exit to the Mediterra- 
nean will not be opened, but the peace confer- 
ence may give parts of Persia to Russia and 
thus offer the harbors which no winter ice 
blocks. And I do not forget the hopes of the 
Balkan people, of Ireland and Finland. 

But it is not enough that the Teutonic 
concord be ushered in by a fair peace between 
Germany and England. Nothing would 
strengthen it more than if the third chief 
friend, America, could be the mediator be- 
tween the two others from the start. The 
three leading statesmen of the United States, 
Great Britain and Germany ought to speak 
not by public notes and speeches in parlia- 
ment but in confidential discussions until 

262 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

some ways of mutual approach are found. 
Three nations will follow, and the earth 
will have glorious peace for generations 
hereafter. To be sure, it might be said 
that we could have had such a British-Ger- 
man-American harmony before the war. Yes 
and no. Certainly both in Germany and Eng- 
land some of the best statesmen and men of 
all walks of life worked sincerely for a bet- 
ter understanding. But they could not suc- 
ceed. There was too much jealousy and envy 
and suspicion accumulated. A terrific thun- 
derstorm was necessary to clear the sultry 
air. Now at last the two countries can start 
anew. Each knows now the tremendous en- 
ergy of the other and knows how much they 
can harm and can help each other. But the 
war has also taught them how many interests 
they have in common. Even the freedom of 
the sea which Germany always demanded as 
a protection against England will be needed 
in future no less for England itself, as its 
trade may otherwise succumb to the sub- 
marines. 

If the Germans complain that such a peace- 
ful peace does not bring them enough to com- 
pensate them for the vast sacrifices, they 

263 



TOMORROW 

ought not to forget that no area at the west- 
ern front could compare with the value of 
lasting peace for their inner development. 
Their long freight trains will move to and fro 
between Berlin and Bagdad, their new col- 
onies will furnish them raw material and 
room for active men, the unbearable pres- 
sure of the last two decades will be removed 
from their frontiers. The whole nation will" 
stand before the world as a people which in 
the first two years of war performed a deed 
unique in the history of mankind. I know 
your Berlin friends will grumble, and yet the 
day will come when they will see that Ger- 
many would have gained less if it had gained 
more. Anyhow it will gain more than it 
ever dreamed of when it was forced into the 
war. Let the enemies of Germany draw a 
caricature of the Teuton who wants to con- 
quer the world and who is hopelessly disap- 
pointed by his failure, as he has not trium- 
phantly entered Paris, London, Rome and 
Petrograd. We know that Germany had only 
the one wish to defend herself and to keep 
the vastly more numerous white and colored 
enemies outside of her borders. This alone 
was worth any sacrifice. 

264 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

Frederick the Great did not gain more 
from the Seven Years' War, and yet its out- 
come meant more for Germany's future than 
any possible conquest. Prussia's triumph 
was never more historically pregnant than 
when a century later the armies returned 
from Koniggratz and the peace brought not 
a foot of hostile territory. The German fear 
that before a decisive German victory is 
won a reasonable peace with England might 
be misinterpreted as a sign of weakness is 
absurd. Since the entrance of Roumania into 
the war the Central Powers with a popula- 
tion of 176,000,000 stand against the Allied 
powers with 855,000,000, the peoples of 
3,000,000 square miles against the peoples of 
31,000,000 square miles. Whoever can de- 
fend himself against such odds does not need 
crushing victories or increased home land in 
order to give weight to his will in the future. 
The two leaders of the war have tested one 
another's steel and have proved invincible; 
that is the most favorable condition for creat- 
ing a peace which may really last, a peace 
between two equals. 

America, too, had cordial feelings before 
the war not only for Great Britain but for 
265 



TOMORROW 

Germany, which fully shared this sentiment 
of friendship. No afterthought ought to 
distort this time of hearty exchange. Yet 
the idea of a political union was never 
in question. The old Washingtonian tradi- 
tion that America was not to enter into 
alliances remained paramount. Happy 
America had no neighbors; why ought it 
to play the costly game of the old nations 
whose policies begin and end with the 
fundamental fact that they are crowded 
together in narrow Europe. But America, 
too, has had to learn from the war, 
and one lesson above all: America is no 
longer without neighbors. Not only Mexico 
gave it an unpleasant reminder of this, but 
Europe made it clear that the Atlantic is no 
more a separation than the Rio Grande. The 
isolation of the new world has disappeared ; 
America is drawn into the old, old play of 
the Occident, a neighbor among neighbors. 
Whether the senate would ever be willing to 
enter into any kind of alliance is not decisive. 
Some definite attitude to the European coun- 
tries will be necessary for the United States 
after the world changes which the war 
has disclosed. If Russia-Japan really stands 

266 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

on one side, England-Germany-France on the 
other, it is certain that America would choose 
the latter party. The understanding may be 
silent, but it will be effective as far as influ- 
ence and action are concerned. And this 
group will be the nucleus for the world union 
in which the new nationalism and the new 
idealism of the single nations will be blended 
with the new pacifism and the new interna- 
tionalism of the organized world community. 
The sixteenth century was one of discoveries, 
the seventeenth one of natural science, the 
eighteenth one of enlightenment and the nine- 
teenth one of technique ; the twentieth prom- 
ises to be the century of organization. 

Organization! — it sounds as trivial as the 
philistine virtue of a department store. Yet 
real organization means in every group that 
every member submits his own desires to the 
interests of the whole, that all friction is 
planfully avoided, that all parts are organi- 
cally interconnected and that nevertheless 
each member is conscious of his full indepen- 
dent responsibilities. If the peoples of a 
group, or finally of the globe, are bound by an 
organization, it demands in the same way that 
each subordinate its selfish desires to the 

267 



TOMORROW 

progress of the whole, to the aims of western 
culture, to the ideals of mankind. It means 
for them, too, that internal friction is avoided 
as among the states of a federation and that 
the productive interrelations are developed 
to the highest efficiency, and finally it de- 
mands that each people be enthusiastically 
loyal to its own historic mission and to its 
own solemn task which is unique and cannot 
be replaced. In short, the organization of 
the peoples which must come involves just 
those four great energies which can be clearly 
traced in the image of the after-war time: 
nationalism, idealism, pacifism and interna- 
tionalism. 

The century of discoveries was ushered in 
by Europe's physical discovery of America; 
the century of organization begins with Eu- 
rope's political discovery of America in the 
last two years. The nations of Europe have 
found for the first time that America belongs 
to their inmost circle and that they cannot 
settle their own conflicts any longer without 
America somehow taking part. The war of 
the Allies against the Central Powers would 
have collapsed in the middle of the second 
year if America had not supported it with 

268 



THE RECONSTRUCTION 

toils and tools. Let us forget! But let us 
remember the age of peace will not bring us 
the hoped-for blessing unless America joins 
heartily the pre-federation of the occidental 
nations. As soon as Columbia really sets 
her face toward peace, the war clouds will be 
dispelled and the age of our hopes will dawn. 
My mind is gleaming with radiant hopes. 
Peace must come soon, and who knows, my 
friend, when the roses bloom again in your 
beautiful garden, one of the German ships 
interned here in Boston harbor may have 
brought me back to the fatherland to you. I 
am sure in one wondrous hour at home I can 
tell you face to face so much more than I 
have told you in these letters. Yes, when 
the roses bloom. . . . 

Cordially yours, 

H. M. 



POSTSCRIPT 

My deab Friend: 

This is a miserable surprise indeed. 
When I finished my last letter the day be- 
fore yesterday I thought how four months 
had passed since I mailed you the first one 
and I wanted to make sure that at least the 
three or four letters of the early weeks had 
reached you safely. I sent you a wireless 
inquiry, and this moment I get your laconic 
wireless answer: "Not one!" Well, when 
I think that these were letters to Germany, 
that England has captured them, and that 
America does not protest, my hope for the 
British-German-American friendship after 
the war is a little chilled. Yet I remain an 
incurable optimist; and surely such methods 
will not uproot my wish that my letters reach 
you. I have copies of them, and I shall print 
them here. Some stray volume will finally 

270 



POSTSCRIPT 

slip through. There are no indiscretions and 
no secrets in our correspondence and,, while 
I should never meddle with political ques- 
tions here, no one can blame me for speak- 
ing frankly to an old friend beyond the 
sea. 

To get a glimpse of these nine pieces of 
correspondence may even be quite wholesome 
for the chance reader. The world has be- 
come accustomed to read only extreme utter- 
ances and the resulting habit of mind is the 
most dangerous obstacle on the way to peace 
and to a sound future. Nobody has the cour- 
age to urge the peace which everybody wants, 
because a few extremists on all sides hiss 
vengeance. What we need is a new setting 
of our feelings ; we too often take one aspect 
for the whole. This morning I found in my 
mail a large number of approving utterances 
from Americans, Canadians and Germans, 
but three marked copies of American news- 
papers in which the editorials objected to 
my suggestions of a Teutonic mutual ap- 
proach after the war. One came from the 
East and said that it is impossible, as "the 
world will never forget that Germany worked 
for this war, lied for it, schemed for it, pro- 

271 



TOMORROW 

voked it and carried it on in a way which 
would put to shame the most barbarous and 
savage races.' ' The other came from the 
West and said that "an approach is impos- 
sible, because generations would have to pass 
before the contempt for the English cam- 
paign of lies and hypocrisy and the disgust 
at the English crimes throughout the war 
would have disappeared from the world.' ' 
And yet the average American is fair and 
sound and ready to value a great goal more 
highly than a rankling sentiment He would 
say with Sophocles : ' ' My task is not to share 
your hatred but your love." The spirit of 
the Americans of today has made the lan- 
guage of Sophocles forgotten and almost for- 
bidden, but the sentiment of his words is 
neither forbidden nor forgotten. I am con- 
vinced that it is the real undercurrent in the 
minds of those who will give us the better 
tomorrow. 

The third clipping came from the South. 
The Nashville Tennessean writes : ' ' That is 
a very foolish thing for a psychologist to say 
at this time. A professor of psychology should 
have known better. He is supposed to know 
something about what is termed the psycho- 



POSTSCRIPT 

logical moment, about the temper of minds 
under given conditions. Even a man who 
knows no psychology is well aware that na- 
tions at war are bitter toward each other 
and that any suggestion of their ever being 
friendly is hooted, scorned and spurned. It 
has been denounced alike in Germany, Great 
Britain and the United States — notwithstand- 
ing its probable truth. Miinsterberg is wrong 
in the application of his psychology : he may 
be right in his vision, no matter how it is 
denounced. ' ' 

I am, of course, deeply touched by the ten- 
der editorial care and anxiety for my repu- 
tation as a psychologist. But would it really 
be better psychology to delay a suggestion 
until it is too late ! If this war ends without 
bringing a state of inner rest and satisfac- 
tion to both England and Germany a more 
horrible war will be unavoidable in the near 
future. Now is the time to encourage every 
effort of the neutrals to secure a peace which 
satisfies all. Of course such a suggestion is 
spurned and hooted by the belligerents. I 
take without whining the editorial verdict 
that it is a foolish thing for the psychologist. 
I am satisfied with the fact that he himself 
273 



TOMORROW 

feels obliged to add that my vision is prob- 
ably right, no matter how it is denounced. I 
am ready to say what is unpleasant if, as he 
acknowledges, it is true. We have suffered 
enough from the one-sided untruth. Only the 
truth will make us free. But I do not tremble 
even for my psychology. The pivot of our 
minds is, after all, habit. No ideas have a 
good chance to win except those to which 
we become accustomed. The harmony of the 
leading nations cannot become a reality un- 
less we make the very thought of this inner 
approach habitual. We have become unac- 
customed to the fundamental fact that Amer- 
ica and England and Germany have their 
very best in common. The claim that these 
three nations belong together and that their 
cordial union alone can secure a lasting peace 
when this war comes to an end may be 
scorned today, but the very scorning forces 
the thought on the minds of the nations and 
makes them slowly accustomed to approach 
even this idea without surprise, until it finally 
becomes habitual. We cannot wait for the 
day after tomorrow to take care of what will 
be needed tomorrow ; today is the time ; this 
hour will decide whether we prepare for a 

RD 4 * 



POSTSCRIPT 

century of warfare or for ages of peace. Let 
us not miss the solemn call of our duty. And 
now for the last time, farewell. 

In faithful friendship, yours, 

H. M. 



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